SNAP's uneasy relationship with the truth:
(l to r) SNAP leaders David Clohessy, Barbara Blaine, and Barbara Dorris
It is an alarming and incontrovertible fact: False abuse accusations against Catholic priests, which have always been present, are on the rise. The mainstream media rarely runs stories about false accusations, and there are groups – especially the anti-Catholic group SNAP – who are desperate to hide the shocking truth about false accusations from the public.
What are the facts about Catholic sex abuse and false accusations? Consider:
- A veteran Los Angeles attorney who has worked on over 100 clergy abuse cases recently declared:
"One retired F.B.I. agent who worked with me to investigate many claims in the Clergy Cases told me, in his opinion, about ONE-HALF of the claims made in the Clergy Cases were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse."
- Over an 18-month period in the Archdiocese of Boston, the Archdiocesan the review board – comprised largely of law enforcement and lay experts on abuse – "did not find that probable cause of sexual abuse of a minor had occurred" in 45% of the cases it thoroughly examined, again suggesting about half of the claims were bogus;
- Last year in the United States, nearly half (45%) of all priests accused of abuse were long-ago deceased and thus unable to deny the charges – and this percentage continues to rise every year;
- In weighing the costs of fighting lawsuits versus settling them, dioceses routinely pay out sizable settlements even for abuse claims against long-dead priests whose records were completely unblemished when they were alive and where accusations were never even substantiated.
Therefore, contingency lawyers have been incentivized to bring claims against dioceses which are either completely bogus or greatly exaggerated, or to seek outsized sums for minor claims.
Over the recent past, we have cataloged a shocking number bogus cases against Catholic priests, but clearly this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Lone voices in the media wilderness: Acknowledging the fraud
Speaking truth to power:
Vincent Carroll from the Denver Post
In truth, the media is structured in such a way that few reporters, editors, or columnists are ever brave enough to pursue a story which runs counter to the accepted narrative on an issue.
In 2010, Vincent Carroll at the Denver Post fearlessly noted, "[F]raudulent or highly dubious accusations are more common than is acknowledged in coverage of the church scandals — although they should not be surprising, given the monumental settlements various dioceses have paid out over the years."
In 2005, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, writing about abuse lawsuits against the Church, asserted, "People have to come to understand that there is a large scam going on with personal injury attorneys, and what began as a serious effort [to help genuine victims] has now expanded to become a huge money-making proposition."
In addition, in 2001 (!), an East Coast attorney wrote, "I have some contacts in the prison system, having been an attorney for some time, and it has been made known to me that [accusing a Catholic priest of abuse] is a current and popular scam."
Who knows how many more such scams are being perpetrated today while the mainstream media sleeps?
We may never know unless a news organization is finally brave enough to run with a counter-narrative and expose the ever-widening scandal of bogus claims against priests.
"All the news that fits, we print."
Stories about wronfully accused priests don't fit the media's paradigm, so they are not printed.
Simple as that.
why was joe birmingham 'never' arrested!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why no mention of the Cardinal Bernadin story?
ZZZ ZZZZ Wake me when the damage to adult priest who can defend himself against false accusations trumps the damage what a defensless child suffered at the hands of a priest.
THEN this article will mean something.
Yeah who cares if the innocent are jailed?
Nice.
Dennis you aren't the one who's asleep here. They can't even offer any number of false claims, proved to be such. I'll wake you when they wake up.
Dennis, the only thing that is MORE disgusting than a pedophile is one that falsely accuses another of being a pedophile. The effects in both cases are lasting and permanent.
Jim, there are 3 false accusations in my diocese alone, one of which has been discussed here (Fr. Stephen Muth). Add to that HALF of the accused priests were dead and had lone accusers well after the alleged incident supposedly took place. Half of what is left VIGOROUSLY maintain their innocence and stand ready to face their accusers and mount a vigorous defense. One priest vigoroulsy maintained his innocence, yet left the priesthood on his own for the good of the diocese, and spent the rest of his days in seclusion. When one sorts out all of the variables and pure gossip, all that remains over the span of 60 years is 4, and 2 of those 4 WERE dealt with harshly by the diocese AFTER local authorities declined to investigate, given a choice of a lifetime of prayer and penance in an 8X8 monastic cell, or total ex-communication. At which point, those 2 DISAPPEARED OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET, only to have a duped public demanding accountabilty from a bishop who was a pimply faced teen at the time these perps were commitiing their offenses. In spite of that, the accuser's mindset concludes that all 14 priests accused in that span are guilty, and that those of us who were in diapers at the time of the alleged offenses are accountable. That ticks me off, Jim. What really makes me want to pull an Elvis on the monitor screen, is that all of this typecasting, broad sweeping mis characterization, over hyperbolizing, towards the priesthood and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole, done by the likes of yourself, Dennis, and SNAP/VOTF, all of that DIVERTS attention AWAY from where the pedos are operating with no hinderances whatsoever. Above anything else, THAT is what makes me doubt your accounts.
With utterly no notice of all the material about the effect of the cumulative Anderson Axis Strategies, ‘dennis ecker’ will presume that any “adult priest” (is there another kind?) “can defend himself against false accusations”. But as we have seen so often here, the Abusenik/Stampede mentality bases itself on a presumption of guilt.
And from what we’ve seen here on this site, whether the comments by “Dennis” will ever mean anything is something for the readership to decide. But I have no doubt that the show will go on (since its director has already bought the Wig collection for props).
Have a look at veronafathersmirfieldblog
There are no lies there.
A young Chinese national priest ordained and living is St. Louis recently had the criminal charges against him dismissed for lack of evidence. For one thing, he was never alone with the "victim". That did not stop the girl and her family from pursuing a case against him. I also heard that the family kept changing their story.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/criminal-charges-dropped-against-st-louis-priest/article_457a2e67-b367-5432-9bf2-dd9295ed7f03.html
Good link
A finding of a lack of probable cause may mean that the accused is innocent or that he has simply "gotten away with it." The accusation cannot be proved. That is all the finding means. The finding of a lack of probable cause does not necessarily mean the claim was “bogus.” The bogus-ness is an opinion or a conclusion that one could come to but it is not necessarily a fact. That is why the numbers/percentages in this article "suggest" something, instead of actually "stating" or "showing" or “proving” something.
Listen to me. I was an FBI Agent. Ever notice that the conspiracy theorist always has ex-FBI, ex-military, ex-police, or name-your-ex-authority testimonials for their arguments from authority. There are no facts in this article that state that half of abuse claims/accusations (or a laaaaaaaarge portion, at any rate) have been found false. The article is rife with "suggestion" though. Instead of facts and stats, highly qualified or properly-positioned-to-know people give their take or impression of the situation. Take my word for it.
Oh, I am not really a retired FBI agent, even though I chose that as a screen name. I am, in fact, a dog . . . on the internet. No opposable thumbs needed!
In my town in Southwest Florida, an attempt was made to extort money from our diocese by accusing a priest who could not defend himself of sexual abuse of a minor. He was proven innocent. I am sure the unscrupulous attorney was disappointed there was no settlement. Oh well, I suppose she just moved on to the next false accusation, in hopes she would do better.
“Patrick Schiltz, dean of the University of St. Thomas law school in Minnesota, said that over more than a decade he had defended Catholic dioceses against sexual-abuse lawsuits in more than 500 cases, and that he had concluded that ‘fewer than 10′ of those cases were based on false accusations.”
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AtAGlance/data.htm
See Doubt Is Cast on Accuser of 2 Priests, Judge Says, by Sam Dillon, New York Times, August 31, 2002. Schiltz was named a federal district court judge in 2006.
The Schiltz estimate is corroborated by a 2004 report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and written by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The report analyzed surveys completed by the U.S. dioceses and many religious orders. The collated results of one of the surveys show that 5,681diocesan investigations of abuse allegations in 1950-2002 yielded definitive results:
4,570 allegations were substantiated (80%)
1,028 allegations were unsubstantiated (18%)
83 allegations were deemed false (1.5%)
Note that these definitively investigated allegations represent slightly more than half of the 10,667 allegations reported in the John Jay study. The other allegations were investigated without definitive result or were not investigated at all. Moreover, the church-funded research project did not collect any data on 298 priests who were considered by their bishops to be exonerated when the dioceses completed the surveys in 2003.
Hope this helps,
Finian
1. We have already addressed the faulty and grossly dishonest use of Judge Schiltz’ words. Here:
http://www.themediareport.com/2011/02/11/snap-misleads-public-regarding-false-accusations-refuses-to-acknowledge-massive-fraud/
2. The JJ “unsubstantiated” and “false” categories are terribly misleading. For one, most dioceses do not even use a “false” category. Thnere simply use “substantiated” and “unsubstantiated.”
For example, in the Archdiocese of Boston, an accuser actually publicly recanted his claim against a priest (claiming “mistaken identity” *cough*), yet his case is listed by the Archdiocese as “unsubstantiated.” (FYI, nearly all public service agencies that investigate abuse use only the terms “substantiated” and “unsubstantiated.”)
Far from being “helpful,” Finian’s comment is terribly misleading and ill-informed.
Finian that was a long time ago when the suits tended to have more merit and wern't being filed against dead guys.
Thank you Finian, Erin Go Braugh.
Finian- It is well known that Bishop Accountability keeps people on their list who never should have been on in the first place-have eventually been exonerated and so on. Your comment is misleading-you're are giving BA credit for being a reputable source of truth when they are absolutely not.
I know a priest where accusations were made by an addict and murderer who is in jail (very popular now to do that-not Billy Doe, by the way). He dropped recanted, accusation listed as "unsubstantiated". The priest never even met the guy-it was a total scam. But he is still listed on BA-very misleading and deceiving. Your comment is a waste of time. You need to read more of the Media Repirt.
And mediareports believes these false accusations. Very few accusations are false.
"I know a priest"
I know priests too. Why be so secret about his name ? Is there something you are trying to hide ?
It would be interesting to know the facts, like did this priest have any past complaints of abuse. Only need a name I can do the rest from there.
This is not true. They are not false reports. The problem is when we go to the bishop with our truth, he says "Prove it." As the hierarchy shuffles pedophile priests from parish to parish, and as secret files are created, the victims have no "proof" – but the bishops do. THEY should be reporting to police…. and the media should continue to report on these heinous crimes – and their subsequent cover ups!
Anonymous, You are correct.!! And we have heard this famous word "extort" as our son attempts to obtain justice within the courts, There are several ways to determine "truth". One is a polygraph and courts of law do enter them as evidence, but the guilty refuse to take them.
Anonymous-what decade are you talking about here?
Mrs. Taylor.-you are the commenter with the story about your son being held with a gun and raped on the altar somewhere? If that really happened, I don't think that you would have a problem getting someone arrested. Although, what decade are you talking about? Hmmm..something as traumatic as that I woild think would be reported by you to the police if you believe your son. Or did he just remember this from 40 years ago? Who needs to take the polygraph-your adult son.
Still seems fishy-just saying-how do you expect to get anywhere here? Seriously, your posting this vague stuff leads nowhere. You were asked a few times to provide a link. Why can'y you do that? Very suspect…Why not go on a victims blog and tell your story.
Oh well, then it is OK then.
Only 50% of accused Catholic priests were molesting children/adults. Not 100%. Whew, that is good news! That means I have a 50/50 chance of my little boy being molested while in the presence of a priest instead of a 100% guarantee of it. That certainly puts my mind at ease.
Actually, statistically, there is a higher chance of you molesting him.
Gee Mark there goes that overly heralded, rarely seen, "christian" decency again. Charming!
The catholic church over time has paid out a an excess of 3 Billion dollars (still not enough) in settlements to abuse victims. Not to mention the millions upon millions of dollars for attorney fees, and we are to believe the reason for this happening and not defending themselves against false claims is because its cheaper to pay-out then fight.
In addition to that you have the priests name who under what you want us to believe is an epidemic of false claims will suffer because of this pay-out.
I will say there is those false claims out there. But not at the numbers you want us to believe.
If I believed this rampant surge of false claims, Reading this article I am also to believe there is some unwritten rule among reporters not to write positive about the catholic church and its clergy.
Dennis, what is enough?
Answer: you are a nut and there is never enough
Ted, "Enough" is when all the people your church has injured are compensated.
If you ran into a crowd of people doing 65 mph with your car would you expect to get away with only compensating 20% of your victims?
That's what $3 billion has done paid only a small percentage of your victims. You don't want to pay damages? Don't injure people.
Some interesting bits here.
On the 27th at 1142AM we get a somewhat confusing comment by ‘Retired FBI Agent’ who then claims at the end of his material that he is not actually any such thing but is actually … “a dog”. Are we to take this as some form of humor? Is the commenter actually serious? The sarcasm, if that is what it is, is so restrained as to undermine itself. Are we to imagine that the commenter is not a retired FBI agent but is also not a dog? The possibilities are all there.
But be that whatever it may, let us get on to the material, which as always is and must be the primary interest.
The point is well-made that there remain several conclusory possibilities behind a finding of lack of probable cause. However, moving beyond – if I may – a specifically ‘policeman’s view’ of the situation, and heading into jurisprudential territory: the key element in the legal forum is precisely whether there is enough evidence to legitimate and justify the deployment of the Sovereign Coercive Authority against the accused.
And (as I also discussed at length on a comment I have just posted on the immediately previous thread) this is a vital and essential and fundamental Stampede failing: it conflates the personal and the public and the legal forums. The personal forum is where one friend shares a personal story with another friend; the public forum is where an individual tells this story in some form of amplifying media to a much wider public (very few of whom will personally know the story-teller); the legal forum is where an individual accuses another individual under the pains and penalties of perjury so as to induce the deployment of the Sovereign Coercive Authority against the accused individual (or organization).
Telling one’s story in each of these forums creates fundamentally different situations, in terms of the requirements for crediting the story. That’s “the way it works” (as some here like to say) and that’s the way it has to work. Any parent presiding over a breakfast table of tykes has been faced with precisely this situation whenever stories are told and claims are made and demands are put forward about an incident that the parent did not actually witness him/herself.
It has been the profoundly corrosive work of the Victimist and then the Abusenik Stampedes that they conflate these forums such that a) they attempt to insist that their own personally-asserted credibility is all that is required to establish the veracity of their story and that b) to withhold crediting the story (especially in the public and/or legal forums) constitutes a personal rejection and re-victimization and ‘dissing’.
‘Retired FBI Agent’ (or Dog) also touches obliquely on the matter of ‘probability’ – as in ‘What is the probability that this story is credible?’. Probability must play a role in the assessment of any claim about an event which one has not personally witnessed.
And it was the genius of the Anderson Strategies that they served to ‘front-load’ public opinion such that priestly-abuse would indeed seem ‘probable’ (and thus too the ‘stories’ claiming such abuse would be presumed to be probable). Amplified by the media for whatever purposes, this public ‘front-loading’ then served to create pressure on pols to degrade evidentiary rules in the legal forum to make conclusions in the legal forum more closely adhere to the far-weaker assessment parameters in the personal and the public forums. So very neat.
Thus I am not overly impressed by the (implicit) claim that thinking and assessing these stories constitutes the work of mere “conspiracy theorists” or perhaps that the vitally enabling synergy (not, I note, ‘conspiracy’) created by the Anderson Strategies among the various interests does not exist.
It has not ever come to my “notice” that “the conspiracy theorist always has” some sort of former police or military credentials. (And would this assertion, if true as ‘Retired FBI Agent’ claims, not serve to undermine his own material here? Or is he a retired police-dog or something along those lines? So much for screen-name reliability.)
And I would also add that there is an Abusenik variant of the “argument from authority”: the insistence that since one is (as one claims to be) a ‘victim’ then that constitutes an ‘authority’ which nobody not a victim has any right to question or doubt; we have recently seen several Abuseniks on this site seeking to dismiss not only the material of other commenters but even their very right to comment, since they are not – as the Abuseniks claim to be – ‘victims’. (Although I have also pointed out recently in comments here that since just about everybody is a ‘victim’ of something, then practically everybody is a ‘victim’ and has the appropriate standing to question or doubt stories.)
Thus, we here are by the very nature of things reduced to questions of probability and probable-credibility. That’s how it works and how it has to work. And the readership is welcome to form their own conclusions based on what they have read in articles and comments here.
Then ‘Finian’ (the 27th, 1149AM) deploys the first (but not the second, later) John Jay Report, while also mentioning a former dean of a Catholic law school who asserted that fewer than 10 of 500 cases with which he is familiar “were based on false accusations” (and who, by amazing coincidence, was thereafter promoted to the professional glory of a federal district judgeship, and – in a further amazing coincidence – in Minnesota, a locale of interest here recently).
The link provided simply leads to a general Bishop-Accountability website page and does not discuss Judge Schiltz specifically. The NYT article referenced by ‘Finian’ simply reports that a Boston attorney was seeking to end his representation of an accuser and the trial judge had “doubts about the good faith” of the lawsuit.
I include here two links to a sequence of articles Schiltz wrote (previously linked-to by TMR but the links may be corroded): see here http://www.dnu.org/news/newspaper/oct03/Not%20all%20the%20news.html and here http://www.dnu.org/news/newspaper/oct03/Not%20all%20the%20news.html
The Schiltz material is clearly more complex than ‘Finian’ or B-A would have us think.
Allow me to reproduce here the text of comments I made on the statistical bits of the first Jay Report.
I have always had reservations about the Sec. 5.3 calculations in the first Jay Report.
First, the numbers didn’t seem to add up. There were 4,392 accused priests (says the Report on page 3); later, that there were 10667 allegations.
But Sec.5.3 struck me because it yielded only 2314 priests (298 exonerated; 345 not-credible, and 1671 credible).
Then – shifting somehow from ‘priests’ to ‘cases’ as the basis of calculation – there were 6696 cases (out of 9281 Victim Surveys) that were actually investigated. And it is out of these 6696 ‘cases’ that 4570 ‘cases’ were substantiated (yielding that 80pct figure).
Then, out of all that, only 27pct of accused priests had their ministry restricted (before, during, or after the investigation?) and that seems very low given the number of confirmed-positive or substantiated cases. Unless the allegated-offenses were so low-level that it was not considered necessary to restrict/remove their ministry.
Second, I was not encouraged by the idea of “Victim Surveys” –specifically, what they were and how they were used (by investigators or by John Jay) as credible sources of information upon which to base a conclusion or a calculation.
And upon what common method and criteria of investigative praxis were the investigations based? That is to say, I don’t think there was a Uniform Reporting Sheet or Uniform Guidelines for any diocesan-level investigation back in those days, so upon what reliable common-basis could either the diocesan investigations or the Jay calculations be made? And – of course – the possibility that a Victim-Survey was simply and merely what its title implied (i.e. an opportunity for an allegant to put down whatever ‘answers’ s/he wished) then I didn’t see where Jay was coming up with credible numbers because I didn’t see a credibly uniform and verifiable Process by which it could derive them.
Third, the 80pct is thus not of the 4392 accused priests or the 10667 allegations but only of the somehow-derived 6696 ‘cases’(investigated variously by means of unguided diocesan staffers under pressure and/or Victim-Surveys – whatever they might be). And it appears – but I can’t be certain – that the 6696 cases were already the result of a prior culling, such that the most non-credible cases were already removed (which would have the effect of increasing the percentage of substantiated cases and perhaps intensifying the impact upon the reader).
Those were my thoughts when I read the first Jay Report back then. There was a) too much variability and confusion in the terms-of-analysis, b) too much confusion in the numbers, c) too much vagueness and uncertainty as to the types of ‘evidence’ used to base the calculations, and thus I had reservations about the percentages therefrom derived.
The second Jay Report seemed clearly to me to avoid going for the ‘impact on the reader’ and its numbers and usages and procedures were a bit more clear.
I would also point out that a) the Church was not the only funding source for the Jay material and the government (through the DOJ) was also a funder. And b) what would Abuseniks say if the Church had refused to fund the Reports?
Then we see the return to the field of ‘Rondre’, self-styled media teacher or professor who can’t seem to manage anything more strenuous and analytical than one-liners, and demonstrates that again here at 1150 on the 27th.
Then ‘Anonymous’ (the 27th, 1154AM) merely asserts that “they are not false reports” and that “this” [the TMR article here, presumably) “is not true”.
Which comment then goes into the familiar presumptive “we” (as in ‘we (genuine?) victims’) with “our truth”. I have discussed at length in prior comments on this site this phenomenon of one’s ‘personal truth’ as distinct from any objective truth. And the equally familiar bits about “pedophile priests” (as if there were actually myriads of them) and ‘shuffling’ and “secret files” and “cover-ups!”.
But the claim here is that “the victims” (whose genuineness we are to presume without question) “have no proof – but the bishops do”. We haven’t seen much actual demonstrable evidence – from all the document cache releases – that bishops had any such “proof”, even in “secret files”, of legions of “pedophile priests” (although I am not here implying that there were not back in the day some few actual clinical pedophiles among priests and that there were not some few bishops who did not take sufficiently robust and decisive action soon enough).
And while I do not disagree that Bishops should have to report to the police, I also note that anybody can dial 911. And if a priest held one up at gunpoint, would one immediately call the local Bishop or would one immediately call the local police? Reporting crime is the privilege and responsibility of every citizen (bearing in mind, of course, the criminality of making false reports to the police).
Then (the 27th, 201PM) ‘Constance Taylor’ asserts that “there are several ways to determine ‘truth’” – and then goes on to name just one, the “polygraph”, which – actually – is not as reliable (or as admissible) as she appears to presume. The fact that she then presumes that persons who “refuse to take them” are “the guilty” is also grossly uninformed: few if any defense counsel will advise submitting to so unreliable and dubious a test, since the test may easily yield a false-positive.
And she might want to contemplate a bit more her assertion that “courts of law do enter them” and yet also allow the accused to refuse them. Had that part of her assertion not struck her as odd and incoherent on its face and in need of further research? I offer this link to the FindLaw site for an initial discussion: http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2013/01/are-lie-detectors-admissible-in-court.html
I would not advise ‘Keith Harlan’ (the 27th, 129PM) to let his mind rest if he is under the impression that the 50 percent number (derived from the Los Angeles attorney’s statement in the TMR article here) is the end total. We then have to factor in what might constitute “molest” and – even more dubiously – such actions as are included in the term “boundary violations”. I would also point out that his math is a bit off in regard to when his “little boy” would be in danger: surely not in his presence, surely not at a public or group function, surely not in a chance meeting out in public … and thus, generally, there are rather few possible circumstances when his “little boy” would actually be at-risk. (None of this is meant to infer or imply that I am happy with any priest ‘molesting’, but the consideration of a substantive issue is not helped by letting one’s imagery run ahead of the actualities.)
While I was composing my immediately prior comment, ‘dennis ecker’ submitted his of the 27th at 318PM.
Somehow in the past few days the amount paid-out has now leaped to “an excess of 3 Billion dollars” [sic]. When did that happen? But let us presume for purposes of the present discussion that this figure “Dennis” provides is accurate. Let us then take 11 thousand or 12 thousand formal allegations and do the math here. And that figure will be – but of course – “still not enough”.
And he then seems to imagine that that 3 billion figure is exclusive of the tortie cuts of 30 or 40 percent plus expenses. Well, OK – then do that math too.
It is – from an insurance attorney’s point of view (which is not the same as a Church defense-counsel attorney) – cheaper to settle than to defend against the bundled lawsuits; in addition to which, especially in a time of Stampede (thanks to the Anderson Strategies) there is a seriously-reduced chance of getting a jury that has not been ‘front-loaded’ and thus a greatly-increased chance that the juries will find against the defendant.
So: Yes, “we are to believe” that it was calculated to be less expensive to settle than to defend.
The next sentence, beginning “In addition to that”, is grammatically and perhaps also conceptually incoherent. (Which with this commenter’s material is always cause for caution.)
He admits that “there is those false claims out there”[sic]. He then says that those claims are “not at the numbers you want us to believe” – for which assertion he offers nothing in support whatsoever.
He then opines – in the accents of Goody-Two-Shoes – that he simply cawn’t think why there might be “some unwritten rule among reporters not to write positive about the catholic church and its clergy” [sic]. I refer him to my comments about the Anderson Strategies and the synergy of interests with in interest in weakening the public credibility of the Church and the dynamics by which all of them operate.
And the relevant point here is not some general media approach to the Church (although one might indeed wonder, in that regard) but rather in the specific media approach to the Catholic Abuse Matter and the Stampede.
And it still remains to be wondered-about: did this mentality whose material we see here actually once have a job (and professional training and responsibility-for) verbally delivering and then writing concise and accurate reports about patients’ condition and situation? Did the claimed ‘abuse’ (currently now classified as “rape”, apparently) derange his capacities? But since the alleged “rape” as a child predated the adult job, then how did he get the job in the first place (presuming that the cognitive derangements were caused by the “rape”)? So many dots, so few connections.
OMG josie you haveone big set of b—-!!!! Who the hell are you to use that tome with anyone? So self righteous.
Rondre, are you the same Rondre who called me a "ho" when I commented on a different site? The same Rondre who claims to be a journalism professor but clearly does not write or think to that level?
tell the truth and all will come out
I would also like to offer this article for readers’ consideration
http://collegeinsurrection.com/2013/04/kangaroo-courts-for-men-on-campus/
It discusses what even a committed feminist (who is also an attorney) now considers a ‘war against men’ on university campuses, focusing especially on the evidentiary problems with sex-abuse charges.
Its relevance to matters under consideration on this site consists in a) the dynamics of weakening evidentiary parameters even though seriously life-changing issues are at stake and b) the larger trend in the wider American society toward this type of Thing.
It will also bear reference to any thoughts in regard to there being nothing but “conspiracy theorists” worrying about the Stampede. And to any thoughts that what is happening with (and to) the Church is purely a result of myriad proofs of the Church’s problems, rather than being the result of some seriously disturbing and corrosive trends in American society generally.
On the 27th at 451PM, as if on cue, ‘Rondre’ – self-reported teacher or professor of media – offers yet another considered opinion, based upon her extensive education and professional educational experience. Ummmm – what university was that again?
Thank you! It always amazes me how defenses mediareport gets. Circus goes on!
Josie has any relative of yours been raped by a priest?
James,
I hope the answer to your question to Josie is no.
Since Archbishop Chaput can be quoted as calling people like her "pagans" I don't think it would matter. We see how this woman who is no lady projects herself not only to me but to others.
p.s. My family wishes your family a great Thanksgiving Day.
If you are assaulted by a black should you hate all blacks, Jim?
You are a bigot of the first order.
Thank you, Ken.
Thanks, you too Dennis. Happy Turkey!
~~Then we see the return to the field of ‘Rondre’, self-styled media teacher or professor who can’t seem to manage anything more strenuous and analytical than one-liners, and demonstrates that again here at 1150 on the 27th.
MR doesn't deserve more than one liners. Sad group.
At 522PM on the 27th JR asks if ‘Josie’ has ever had a relative “raped by a priest”? And what specifically would be the relevance here?
The implication, of course – and one core to the Abusenik approach – is that once one is emotionally involved in such a way, then principles of evidence and analysis or even probability do not or should not or cannot be permitted to interfere. Or, in the obverse, if one is not thus emotionally involved, then one has no business talking about the subject (and must leave the commenting to the story-tellers).
But then JR was not raped by a priest (unless we accept the Abusenik definition of any and all sexual-abuse as being rape) so then … what business does he have in regard to the topic? And “Dennis” was only raped by a priest on his own say-so, with only – for whatever evidentiary value it may be worth – JR for corroboration, or at least antiphonal back-up.
The permutations of the problem do go on and on.
Actually, Publion, Dennis said recently that he was not raped but he considers all abuse rape.
Wow-I missed JR's comment to me at 5:22 (27th). He sneaks them in anywhere so it is hard to catch them all and bother to sift through the "stuff". Also, when you answer him he doesn't seem to always read or understand.
For the record, JR (and Dennis-I said this to you before but I don't think you got it), I do not know anyone (family or friends, acquaintances, neighbors and far away friends and relatives) who was ever raped by a priest. I have a huge family as my husband does-between us lots of brothers spanning in age between the two families over 3 decades-attending high school from the mid 40's to mid 70's-(all attended catholic schools-some private catholic/some parochial) many played sports, all had many friends and lived in various neighborhoods in Philadelphia and suburbs. Noone was ever abused and I have personally asked a good amount if they have ever heard of anyone being abused. Answer:NADA. Now, in the past decade as this has all come to light, I continually ask my contemporaries, also many nieces and nephews. Only one, uno, in Delaware knew someone who reported abuse years ago that occured i believe in the early 80's. That's it.
~~If we add the total of our big table and the bishops' pre-2002 number:
$2,486,897,033
+ 749,600,189
$3,236,497,222
we get over $3 billion. This very large number still leaves out the many small settlements done since 2002 but not yet included in our table, as well as any pre-2002 settlements that the bishops didn't include in their John Jay numbers.
Hence the total value of sexual abuse settlements in the United States is well over $3 billion. This $3 billion number far exceeds the dire prediction of Doyle, Peterson, and Mouton in 1985. And $3 billion is certainly an underestimate.
NCR in addition reported in 2012 over 100,000 cases of abuse. Lets compare that to the death toll of the Vietnam war of 58,148 killed. It was safer for our children to walk through the jungles of Vietnam then be associated with a catholic priest ?
…and what is that number again of false accusations you want us to believe. 10,000, 1000, 100, ?
The title of this specific blog should be: Catholic Church seeks pity on small amount of false accusations against clergy.
Josie,
When did I say I was not raped ?
Your grooming tactics will not work. If you wish to post lies that's fine. But you are skating on thin ice.
Your attempts to make me, Mr Robertson, and Miss Taylor go into detail regarding our abuse for your own personal pleasure/excitement has failed. I for one have the people who matter the most to me (Family, friends, law enforcement, Archdiocese) believe in what has happened to me at the hands of Father Hermley OSFS teacher/tennis coach Father Judge High School. That is all you need to know and nothing else.
Who do you think you are to request anything else. ? Your own archbishop chaput defines you as a pagan, and I don't think he meant motorcycle gang.
[edited by moderator]
Well done Dennis!
By the way Americans were not simply walking through the jungles of Vietnam. We were an illegal; invading; occupying; murdering; jungle defoliating; napalm dropping machine in Vietnam. Doing all that not only to the innocent Vietnamese people but to our very own soldiers as well.
In the matter of ‘Rondre’ (the 27th at 627PM and 632PM), we are clearly heading into almost embarrassingly primitive territory here and why offer incitement to prolong or intensify that dynamic?
Readers are welcome to consider the probability that we are here receiving transmissions from a competently-trained professional mind or, in the alternative, from some other entity. How easy it is, on the internet, to make claims that one’s competence can neither demonstrate nor sustain.
Which itself demonstrates the problems with the internet and its role in the Stampede.
Why all the vitrol towards the Media Report? I believe a person falsly accusing a priest is just as dispicable as a priest who rapes a child.
Back in Feburary this year, someone who worked in a Catholic school not far from where I live claimed he saw a priest raping a child. You can read about it here: http://www.standard.net.au/story/1333496/portland-teacher-punished-for-speaking-out-against-abuse-inquiry-learns/
But last month, we found out that the police invastigated the claims but could find no evidence of wrong doing by the priest in question. So it would appear that the teacher has made a false accusation. Yet no follow up story has appeared in that same paper saying so. So I think that the media might be prejudiced against the Catholic Church. Certainly I remember the Standard asked on its Facebook page if gay marriage should be legal in Australia. When I said no, even the online editor called me nasty names. So I think he is the bigot, not me.
I cannot see how you can define this as a false claim. The teacher came forward and reported on what he thought he seen. A child being raped. Something that all of us should be doing instead of turning a blind eye.
Although what this individual thought he seen was incorrect, by reading the link I do not believe this individual meant any harm. Totally different on how the catholic church dealt with abuse of children, knowing of dangerous priests, knowing of the sick acts they performed and made children perform and did nothing.
You and your neighbors should be overjoyed that such an individual who cares lives in your community. Someone who is watching over your kids when you can't.
Is there any difference if this same person thinks your house is being robbed and calls the police only to find there was no robbers. ?
LOL!
Do you believe, Mark T, in a seperation of church and state?
Do you believe that gay people pay the same taxes for the same government as you?
Do you believe all citizens are equal? Or are heterosexual citizens more equal than their fellow citizens?
Why do you think 16 states in America have allowed gay marriage?
Why has pope Frank said that too much emphasis is being put by the church on being anti gay?
By the way fellow posters and readers who support capitalism as "the way God want's things to be.' You may need to read Francis's anti-capitalist "propaganda" in his first encyclical as pope. You may need to be re-thinking your politics. LOL!
P.S. Vitriol??????? I don't think tmr is worth hating. I think it's worth pitying.
Thanks Josie for your answer. Do you think if one of your large catholic family, members had been raped by a priest you might feel differently, as in less critically of all claims of sex abuse?
And FYI any adult who has sex with under age children has commited RAPE. Statutory RAPE. That's what the law says. So when I or Dennis write the word rape in refference to our or any underage person's sex abuse by any adult. We are legally talking RAPE.
Josie you are entitled to think critcally about claims if you wish too. It's the assumption that a large number of claims against priests are false that is the problem. IMHO
P.P.S. Josie.
I don't "sneak" my "stuff" in here. I post exactly the way you post your "stuff".
‘Josie’ has reminded us (the 28th, 226AM) that “Dennis” does indeed – in that marvelously though queasily convenient Abusenik way – define “rape” as being pretty much anything of a sexual nature that is unwanted or unsolicited. (‘Josie’ also caught that bit about ‘Constance Taylor’ having not so long ago put forward that story involving – if I recall correctly – a young man (who may have been her son) and two priests and rape and a gun and an altar.)
Then “Dennis” (the 27th, 939PM) advises “James” that he (“Dennis”) doth “hope the answer to your question to Josie is no”. This is a dear niceness, but it comes at a price: he hopes that ‘Josie’ has been spared the life-wrecking and world-historical traumatic experience that he (“Dennis”) had to go through (which – nicely – ‘Josie’ would not have gone through and thus she doesn’t have standing to raise doubts or questions … although she and any other reader, regardless of their lifelong lack of any ‘victimization’ experiences, are welcome to proffer sympathetic ooohs, awwwws, and clucks in response to any and all Abusenik stories).
Dubitate Abuseniks dona ferentes. Meaning: Don’t trust Abuseniks who are bringing gifts.
He then pulls off one of his “Archbishop Chaput” (properly capitalized, for once) 3x5s that “pagan” bit that had been dealt with here a while back. And in what way is ‘Josie’ characterizable as a “pagan” here? “Dennis” can’t explain it; but he had the 3×5 handy and needed to toss some plop at ‘Josie’ so – tah-dahhhhhh! – she is a “pagan”, certified to be so by no less an authoritative source than Archbishop Chaput (upon whose judgment and creds, weirdly, “Dennis” is not otherwise inclined to rely).
But – there is no subtlety in him – “Dennis” takes the gloves off (but keeps the Wig on) and outright pronounces that ‘Josie’ is “this woman who is no lady”. Lovely. (‘Josie’ clearly does not need me to defend her, and I examine this Eckerian material here simply for the conceptual insights it yields.)
No doubt “Dennis” had deep personal experience about being “a lady” and he is free to make such pronunciamentos as he wishes, from the Wiggy Throne he has erected for himself in his mind (or in his bathroom or some other personal room in one of his houses).
And – as if this scam could still be run – he suddenly puts on the Wig of Benevolent Bonhomie and re-appears on stage in the next sentence to wish us all “a great Thanksgiving Day” on behalf of him and whatever other entities we might wish to accept are in his company. Well, back-atcha!
On the 27th at 732PM he had given us – totally un-supported by identifying infor or link – a set of numbers that – but of course – adds up to over his “$3 billion” figure. And then asserts that “this very large number” (yes, I agree with him on that completely) “still leaves out many small settlements done since 2002 but not yet included in our table as well as any pre-2002 settlements that the bishops didn’t include in their John Jay numbers”.
Wow. Where to begin? First, as noted above, no references and yet he refers to “our table”; what “table” might that be? Second, where does he get the bit about the “many small settlements” – is there a “table” or source for that? Third, he claims that the three-billion figure is “pre-2002”.
This is the link to the text of first (2004) John Jay Report: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/The-Nature-and-Scope-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-and-Deacons-in-the-United-States-1950-2002.pdf
Part 6 (pp.103ff) gives the total figure for costs as 542million for the period 1950-2002 (although the Report notes that this sum does not reflect the then-recent 85million settlement in Boston nor the already-by-then (2004) pending cases that, I note, by 2004 had already been prompted by the 2002 Phase of the Stampede). The Report notes its own methodology in corroborating the figures provided by the Dioceses. So in contrast to the “Dennis” claim of $3,236,497,222 as being the “pre-2002” number we wind up with the number of 542million and a bit.
This is the link to the second (2011) John Jay Report: http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2011_05_18_John_Jay_Causes_and_Context_Report.pdf
This Report’s focus is primarily psychological and sociological and does not include any cost-figures.
Thus the issue of accuracy and veracity (as so often) in his postings generally and in his numbers here: the “Dennis” assertion of 3 billion in pre-2002 costs means that the since-2002 costs must be somewhere in the vicinity of another 3 billion, bringing the whole thing to 6 billion or more; in which case he would certainly be right to say that “$3 billion is certainly an underestimate”. Y’a think?
But we have no basis for his figures and certainly no reliable sourcing that he has cared to provide.
And again and again and again: the “100,000” figure was – at very best – an extrapolation and not an actual count. The only actual verifiable number we have is the number of allegations compiled and reported in John Jay; and if any other reliable assessment group has compiled other figures then let’s see them – with identifiers and links. The NCR ‘report’ (surprise, surprise) simply extrapolated on the basis of there being presumed to be 9 potential-allegants for every 1 allegant who formally lodged claims; given roughly 10 thousand formal allegants, this specious extrapolative math yields the figure of 100,000 pretty much out of thin air (but ‘extrapolation’ sounds impressively science-y, doesn’t it?). On much the same basis we were once assured that the Soviets had vast fleets of ICBM’s capable of hitting the continental U.S. when in actuality they had less than 10 at the time.
But in the end, there is certainly no basis for any inferring that the amount of the settlements is any indicator of the validity of the allegations – and we have been over and over that ground many times here.
The whacky stitching-together of the already-dubious 100,000 number with the Vietnam casualty figures is what it is and I am very happy to leave it up there where “Dennis” has put it.
But it lubricates his burlesque soft-shoe into the old stand-by line about the safety of “our children”, a classic Abusenik manipulation.
Further concluding bits of snark, in light of the remarkable insufficiency of his figures or the proof for them, simply serve as further self-applied nails in his own coffin here. (Which puts him perhaps more specifically not so much in the burlesque hoofing or song-and-dance category and more in the burlesque magic-tricks category – we can’t say that he is globally un-talented.)
[edited by moderator]
How does mockery aid your arguments? It doesn't. It only degrades us, your opposition.
You don't play well with others.
[edited by moderator] your absolute refusal to admit when you are WRONG, as in Constantine being a catholic saint.
[edited by moderator] And your behavior has nothing to do with your arguments against victims here. You can believe what you like, as wrong as it is. It's how you deal with, the way you treat people, that I'm complaining about. Grow up.
Well, we can pass over in silence the various irrelevant bits of JR excursus on the Vietnam war and other topics. While they may seem as simply a ramble (if not a rant) yet there is a method to the madness: JR gets to type-up something, but avoids having to deal with any of the issues actually on the table at this point.
But then we come to “Dennis” (the 18th, 1023AM) who works a more studied variant of that play: he asks ‘Josie’ “when did I say I was not raped?”.
But the issue on the table isn’t whether he said he was raped, but rather what he defines as rape. I have a rather clear recollection that in the first week of October we went all over this point (it turned out, he claimed, that he was using an ‘app’ dictionary, if we recall) and that “Dennis” had indeed defined “rape” in such a way that just about any unwanted sexual experience was definable as “rape”. If he wishes to state clearly here that he does not consider all unwanted sexual experience as “rape” then he is welcome to change the record on that, but otherwise the record stands as it has from the first week of October. The entire exchange took place in comments on the TMR article dated October 2, 2013 and entitled “Evangelical sex abuse worse than the Catholic Church”.
But it’s convenient for the Abuseniks and the Stampede: defining any unwanted sexual experience as ‘rape’ certainly does drive the numbers up, doesn’t it? And it enables some persnickety Abuseniks (who want to claim simultaneously that they were not actually physically penetrated while also claiming the status of ‘rape victim’) with a handy path to that objective.
In what way ‘Josie’s questions or comments can be regarded as “grooming tactics” is anybody’s guess. This term – as currently deployed in the sex-abuse universe – means a person contemplating sexual-abuse or rape who first engages in various innocent-seeming activities in order to ingratiate him/herself with his/her potential target. Is ‘Josie’ here accused of planning to perpetrate sexual-abuse on “Dennis”? In the internet forum?
And following up on that bit, “Dennis” then warns ‘Josie’ that she is “skating on thin ice”. This really is becoming a burlesque, or worse, some sort of Absurdist theater (which, come to think of it, may not be so surprising after all). Conceptually, we have been on pretty thin ice since the Abuseniks first began deploying their Playbook gambits here.
In what way can any adult on the internet “make” any other adult do anything? Nobody is trying to “make” or force “Dennis” or “Mr. Robertson” or “Miss Taylor” (how does he know about her marital status and whence this culturally archaic usage of “Miss”?) “go into detail about [their] abuse”. Rather, there are simply questions about the material they voluntarily chose to put up here.
(Indeed, ‘Constance Taylor’ did not, to the best of my recollection, claim that she was abused or raped; rather she claimed a scenario in which her son was raped by two priests, at gunpoint, on or near an altar – which scenario certainly raises some rather substantive questions. Unless, perhaps, you are an Abusenik and are so used to believing many impossible things before breakfast that you don’t notice anything unusual in anything having to do with allegations and claims and stories of Catholic clerical abuse.)
I also note that in this paragraph “Dennis” uses “abuse” rather than “rape” to describe their alleged experiences, as if the terms were interchangeable. (For more on this, see the October discussion linked-to above, and my further comments here below.)
We then get the marvelous statement from “Dennis” that “the people who matter most to me” include “family, friends, law enforcement, Archdiocese” [sic], which takes us to or over some distant galactic boundary indeed in this particular universe of discourse.
And we are also informed – solely on the authority of his own say-so here – that all of the aforementioned “believe in what has happened to me”. Readers are welcome to credit that or not, as they see fit.
But then – on that fundamentally dubious basis – he concludes by asserting that “that is all you need to know and nothing else”. This is classic and pitch-perfect encapsulation of the Abusenik game: one claims to be a victim by telling a story, and thus instantly by some magic nobody has a right to question or glean any further information (and yet, but of course, everybody must forthwith permit and even approve-of the Sovereign Coercive Authority being deployed against the accused without reservation or further ado).
Goebbels put it in a pithier phrasing in German, whenever anybody had the temerity or treasonous bad taste to raise questions: Mehr als dieses braucht ihr nicht zu wissen! (Tr. More than this you do not need to know!)
So nobody is allowed to raise questions but everybody has to accept the stories, claims and allegations or risk being termed ‘insensitive’ or ‘re-victimizing’ or (pick your favorite JR epithet here).
It is this dynamic that the media embraced with a straight face (for its own purposes). And thus the Stampede.
And – there is no subtlety in him – “Dennis” then swings into a concluding declamation, brandishing the Wig of Righteous and Outraged Indignation: “Who do you think you are to request anything else?”. We note, first, that suddenly ‘Josie’ is not “making” dear “Dennis” do anything, but merely making a “request” – but, of course, in the Abusenik Playbook the latter is nothing more than a different term for the former.
And then – in a sublime incoherence – he tosses a final (and utterly unsupported, and perhaps unsupportable) epithet to the effect that Josie’s “own archbishop chaput [no capitalization, this time] defines you as a pagan”. Do we not reach the heights of both manipulativeness and irrationality here?
The final bit about some actual “motorcycle gang” or perhaps the Protestant-led gang in the later-80’s Dragnet movie is anybody’s guess and good luck with that.
So we see in this comment, several key Abusenik gambits deployed: a) the self-serving redefinition of “rape” to include any unwanted sexual-type activity; b) the mischaracterization of various relevant material (the story of “Miss Taylor”); c) the utterly unsupported claims that important folks “believe” the story (so, then, who are we to ask any further questions); d) the bald assertion that nobody has the right to question any story, claim, or allegation in order to establish its accuracy and veracity – or even probable credibility – independently of the Abusenik’s own claim and telling; and e) the epithetical mis-characterizing of questioners as making unjustifiable and outrageous demands simply by asking questions.
Imagine you are a parent presiding over a breakfast table of tykes, and in response to your inquiries as to one tyke’s particular claim and demand, you get a response consisting of this pastiche of (a) through (e). What would you do as a responsible adult? And yet in the Stampede era, one is simply supposed to accept everything claimed with a straight and serious face and start doling out designated punishments forthwith and without further ado.
Lastly, for this comment from “Dennis”, we see a remarkable combination of apparent cognitive incompetence and yet the most convenient manipulativeness. And thanks for that.
Then – moving right along beyond JR’s almost cartoonishly antiphonal one-liner support of what “Dennis” says, and beyond JR’s aforementioned distracting excursus into various bits of American history and current events – we get an equally brassy assertion (the 28th, 1022AM) that simply repeats more of the old stuff.
First, that it’s all ultimately a matter of “feeling” rather than anything else (such as a desire to connect dots, rationally and credibly) – which again gives us a pitch-perfect demonstration of what we are dealing with when it comes to the Abusenik Playbook.
Second, an excursus on the fact that “statutory rape” (the trademark give-away use of ‘shouting’ omitted) involves “any adult who has sex with underage children” (are there any other kind?). Since most formally recorded allegations of Catholic clerical abuse do not involve ‘having sex’ with children, then the deployment of this bit of information is of questionable relevance to the matters at hand.
And then there’s the question of just what “has sex with” means, but in the Abusenik Stampede Playbook, quibbling over definitions constitutes entirely too much thinking. State laws vary in their definitions. For myself, any imposition of sexual-experience by an adult upon a child is criminal, but – as perhaps had not occurred to JR – there is a reason why the term for adult-child sexual activity is “statutory rape” and not simply “rape”: because the term “rape” here is not used to include actual penetration. Indeed, depending on the type of sexual-experience imposed upon the child (age parameters come into play here, varying somewhat across States), some “statutory rape” charges qualify as misdemeanors rather than felonies.
I offer this discussion from the Find Law site: http://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/statutory-rape.html#sthash.VWOeMsjH.ViRHipwq.dpuf
Which brings me to this point: perhaps we can all agree that – according to the legal parameters above-discussed – we could say that JR and “Dennis” claimed to have been ‘statutorily raped’. Which would then also leave open the door to consider whether what they claimed happened to them was legally characterizable as a felony or a misdemeanor.
Which then might lead to the consideration of whether the majority of actual and genuine priestly abuse commissions were characterizable formally as felony-level or misdemeanor-level.
Such are the interesting but vital complications and possibilities in legal matters.
All of which, as I said, would clearly be characterized by Abuseniks as entirely too much thinking and complication for their purposes. And I would not deny that at all.
Thus the usual Abusenik word-play, demonstrated here by JR in his final paragraph, must be seen for the word-play that it actually is: “statutory rape” is not actually a subset of “rape” but rather a (perhaps questionably applied) use of the term “rape” to globally describe – in the case of ‘children’ (however legally defined in this or that particular legal jurisdiction) – any sexual-experience whatsoever, most of which falls on the definitional spectrum below or far-below actual penetrative forcible rape as the term is formally and classically understood.
Even brief contemplation of these legal actualities will, I think, move rational and objective readers to consider whether the largest fraction of Catholic abuse stories actually describe, and the allegations comprise, what – absent the amplifying and exaggerating effects of the Anderson Strategies and the Stampede – would be misdemeanor-level rather than felony-level acts.
Of course, the Abusenik Playbook has dealt with this always-present legal difficulty by focusing not on the legal actualities of the alleged acts, but rather on the (more imagined or hypothesized than proven) lethality of the psychological effects of any sexual-activity imposed by an adult on a child. And I have earlier discussed in comments the problems with that simplistic connecting – including those studies that conclude that any such sexual activity might or may or can cause long-term difficulties.
Finally, I note again that all of this effort at thinking-through specific stories and allegations and the legal actualities of acts would most certainly have created an un-congenial speed-bump for any interests seeking to create a Stampede, which by its very definition implies a non-rational and highly-emotional rush in a particular direction manipulated by certain interests for their own purposes.
Which is why the Abusenik Stampede has always sought to avoid any such thinking-through and any such discussion, trying to squelch such thinking-through and discussion either by distraction or by threat or by demands for silence (on whatever pretexts) – as we have recently seen so nicely demonstrated in comments on this thread.
~~Steier’s legal maneuver is the latest in a long series of moves by him and Catholic officials to block the disclosure of thousands of pages of long-secret files concerning hundreds of LA-area child molesting clerics.
The above is the reasoning of why Mr. Steier made his accusations.
Jim, they really play dirty out there.
Dennis they have a lot of money to play dirty with, 2000 years + of money, tax free money. Here something like 17 million, rumor has it, was spent by cardinal Mahoney on paying pr firms for spin and the longest drag out of information (that implicates the church) as possible. Hence partially released files even 6 yrs. after our settlement.
On the 29th at 1210AM “Dennis” offers what is apparently a quote from something I cannot locate in either the text of this TMR article or the comments. As best I can make out some gentleman named Steier has made yet another “legal maneuver in a long series of moves by him and Catholic officials to block the disclosure of thousands of pages of long-secret files concerning hundreds of LA-area child-molesting clerics”. (Note the oddly correct capitalization of “Catholic” here.) And that said Steier “made his accusations” – although against whom and what the content of those accusations are (or were) we are not informed.
Where to begin? First, let’s just take the “Dennis” material as it is and not go on a wild-turkey hunt for the said Steier. So then: a) on this site there was a long and involved look at such documents as the LA media released (back in the days when they were releasing such caches) and there was very little to be found in them compared to the claims, assertions, predictions and expectations emanating from the Abuseniks. And additionally, there have been in that cache-material some revelations distinctly un-congenial to Abuseniks in regard to their claims and their stories and their spins. All of which is part of the record here.
And b) in what way are the files “secret”? Are they “secret” in the way any organization’s personnel files are “secret”, i.e. that people can’t simply walk in off the street at corporate HQ and have a look? Or are they “secret” in the way that any organizational personnel records are “secret”, i.e. that not even members of the organization can walk into – say – Human Resources and have a peek? Or are they “secret” in the sense that the Pentagon and other government agencies with classification authority have untold numbers of files ‘classified’ so that not only average persons or citizens but even ranking military personnel with no ‘need to know’ are barred from having a gander at them? Or are they “secret” merely in the sense that the Abuseniks and torties can’t simply go fishing around looking for whatever bits might fuel this or that gambit from the Playbook?
And if at some point legal action is initiated, then the relevant files are placed under certain restrictions by operation of law and justicial procedures.
But there is also this point: on this and on other sites, Abuseniks have occasionally opined that the purpose of civil-lawsuits against the Church is not primarily to achieve redress for the particular initiating allegation; but rather that the purpose is simply to provide a legal vehicle for “Discovery”, meaning that the lawsuit – whatever its merits or lack thereof – merely provides the legal pretext for torties to go fishing around in the targeted Diocese’s files looking for whatever interesting stuff they might be able to turn into further lawsuits or media press-releases or otherwise feed like chum into the waters of innuendo and dark-suspicions that (as we have so often seen) so easily entice the general Abusenik mind.
And yet and yet and yet: while ravenously lip-smacking for getting into the files of their targets, Abuseniks are – as we have seen even on this very thread – aghast and outraged and simply shocked, shocked that anybody would dare to examine their (Abusenik) material or might deploy the same amount of skeptical suspicion toward their (Abusenik) stories, claims, presumptions, suggestions, or innuendoes. But then, didn’t CEO Clohessy say that there had to be that double-standard? How else, really, could the Stampede’s Ball Keep Rolling? How else could It ever have been started up?
That would be my thought as to this Eckerian submission. In the absence of the Steier material, there is insufficient material to formulate anything in regard to the statement “The above is the reasoning of why Mr. Steier made his accusations” [sic]. Except to a) note the odd grammar and b) wonder to what here does “The above” refer?
We are all then allowed a temporary ‘clearance’ to eavesdrop on the intimate tete-a-tete between the two Wigs, “Dennis” and (today) “Jim”: “they really play dirty out there”. To which I would respond that we see here yet another Abusenik bit from the Playbook: if you try to defend yourself against Abuseniks, then you are ‘playing dirty’ (whereas when an Abusenik calls a questioner names and insists that the questioner has no right to know anything more than the re-heated hash of the original ‘story’, that is apparently not ‘playing dirty’ but is simply the working-out of Pure And Righteous Goodness). Yah.
Then, “Jim” himself proffers more eructations (with notable editing) on the 29th at 1222PM: Apparently anything that exposes the problems with the Abusenik bits is “mockery” (whereas terms like “Fool” and “Idiot” and so forth are … not thus classifiable?).
But I will go further here. We have been at it long enough here with this Abusenik material so that very little of its essential gambits are new any longer; and while to see the stuff when it was first-time-around was somewhat conceptually interesting, the repetition of the same bits as if there were no ‘yesterdays’ here when those same bits were exposed for what they were does lead one to a certain detached humor at the whole show. And at its be-Wigged (and often rather overly –grease-painted) players, hoofers, crooners, magicians, raconteurs, one-liner walk-ons, and so forth and so on.
So much for the “mockery”. Which, however, also seeks to strike the note of Abusenik victimization, as in: if you point out that I am not wearing any clothes, you re-victimize me. Aspiring Abusenik emperors are advised herewith that if they don’t want to be seen as not wearing any clothes, then they should put some on. Rational material invites a rational hearing; non-rational material gets noticed and dealt-with as such; and repeated non-rational material invites – alas – a certain bemused amusement. That – as some Abuseniks like to bray – is how it works.
I (apparently) am then advised – in the accents of a grade school report card (and perhaps of a type with which JR is too-familiar) – that “you don’t play well with others”. Oh my. But a) we are not at all ‘playing’ here and b) I am not overly inclined to credit the opinion due to the demonstrated credibility (or lack of it) of its source. However, the Wig of Teaching is certainly welcome to whatever opinion floats his proverbial boat. Abuseniks, as I have often said, certainly do like to deliver their pronunciamentos … rational and coherently presented material, not so much.
He then goes back to the Constantine-as-Saint bit, for which he has offered no demonstration of his claim except his own certainty, nor any coherent counter-material to what I put up in links. And good luck with that.
I have no idea how my “behavior” does or does not have anything “to do with your arguments against victims here”. First of all – of course – we really don’t know if we are actually dealing with any genuine victims “here”, nor has anything they have put up made their claims any more probable (and, indeed, just the opposite).
Second, I haven’t actually claimed to “believe” anything, so much as I have pointed out the difficulty with believing what I am being fed through the various Abusenik comments. And in that regard, I point out yet again that it is not so much a matter of “belief” in the first place; it is a matter of assessing whether this or that material proffers ideas that are coherent and rationally convincing and events that are credible and probable – none of which we get from the Abusenik submissions (and claims and assertions and allegations) here.
But then – in a sly two-step – JR will try to sidestep all of those problems by now bleating that it is not the content of my material that he finds (today, anyway) irksome, but rather “it’s how you deal with, the way you treat people, that I’m complaining about” [sic]. Having been called variously “Fool” and “Idiot” and so on and so forth, and having been confronted with the type of material we have seen for so long here, I rather think I’ve been pretty decent about the whole thing. But JR is welcome to construe things in whatever way is congenial-to or necessary-for him.
And JR concludes with a stern instruction – with which, again, I think he’s rather too personally familiar – to “Grow up”. Whoever had given him that advice along the way (and perhaps later paid for it dearly), I can only support the proposal.
Constantine according to your own links ain't a saint. Could Dave Pierre adjudicate this, please?
Let me fill in the blanks to my post on 11/29 at 12:10am since two other prior post that went along with that one were not posted.
Mr. Steier is the veteran L.A. attorney who is mentioned on this blog (omitted by TMR) who represents the catholic church in clergy abuse cases in L.A.
Acting on only an opinion of this retired F.B.I. agent and not based on any facts Mr. Steier took those opinions that clergy abuse cases were entirely false or greatly exaggerated.
[edited by moderator]
Since the time these unsubstantiated "opinions" were looked at as credible by Mr. Steier 1 Billion dollars have been paid out to clergy abuse victims. But if we are to believe what others have said here on this post it is cheaper to pay-out then fight.
An amount of money that could feed hungry children or help the homeless not only paid out to abuse survivors but these SO-CALLED false accusers that is on the rise.
All that can be done with JR at this point – in regard to the Constantine bit (the 29th, 836PM) – is to note this bit for anybody keeping Notes on the Playbook: rather than actually put up any quotation from my material that demonstrates that Constantine is not a Saint, nor any supportive material of his own that might counter my material, JR instead merely wah-wahs for TMR to “adjudicate” … about as neat an example of the whining tyke at the breakfast table as one is likely to see this side of childhood. It is what it is.
“Dennis” then offers some material (the 29th, 1029PM) in regard to the Steier references. I can’t quite figure out how Attorney Steier can simultaneously be “mentioned on this blog (omitted by TMR)”.
Nor does this elucidation by “Dennis” actually indicate what Attorney Steier has actually gone and done with “the opinion of this retired F.B.I. agent” – has he filed some form of Motion or made a public comment or what? Nor do we know how old the action of Attorney Steier is: has he recently acted, or is his action sometime in the past and, if so, how far in the past?
Now, in the matter of this retired F.B.I. agent’s “unsubstantiated opinions”: it’s hard to tell what to make of their relevance and significance if we don’t know how Attorney Steier has used them and in what way he has chosen to rely on them.
I have, however, already said – in response to the comment on this thread of somebody styling himself as “Retired FBI Agent” (or retired police-dog, or some such) – that probability must enter into any third-party assessment in matters where the third-party or third-parties did not actually witness the claimed events. While the assessment of the “retired F.B.I. agent” discussed in this TMR article cannot be considered as per se dispositive in a court of law, it certainly qualifies as an element for readers here to take into consideration when making their own judgment as to the probability of claims and allegations.
And if we here are to be continually bethumped with the Abusenik insistence that their own opinions, assertions, claims, stories, presumptions and certainties must be taken as truth and fact, then I can’t see how this article’s “retired F.B.I. agent” does not qualify for our consideration here, along with all the aforementioned material put up by the Abuseniks.
Nor do we know just how long it has been since Attorney Steier’s action such that we can then ascertain if one billion dollars have been paid out in the intervening time-period.
I repeat again that to the eyes of an attorney for an Insurer, and quite possibly to the eyes of an actually-retained Church defense counsel, defending a) against bundled lawsuits b) in a time of Stampede … would not at all seem a wise course to take.
Nor is it simply a matter of the money, but also of less tangible considerations. What, for instance, would be the effect if Stampeded juries frequently returned guilty verdicts regardless of the rationality of their decisions (as, for example, we have recently seen in the Philadelphia Billy-Doe trial and as we saw a year or more back in the Santa Cruz/Santa Clara assault case, and – in a relevant but different type of case – in the Pre-School Day Care Satanic Ritual Abuse trials 30 years back, where almost every one of the trial outcomes was reversed (in favor of the accused and convicted defendants) as the emotion faded and more objective assessments were made at the appellate level).
And as for the last bit – with the manipulative heart-string pulling about that billion dollars that could have fed “hungry children or help the homeless”: it is conceptually incoherent on its face. All the money paid out to allegants (I will not participate in this queasy filching of Holocaust imagery, especially in regard to persons who have not actually been reliably established as genuine victims) might have gone to such good causes, but didn’t because it was diverted by the Anderson Strategies and the Stampede.
Beyond that point, the sentence itself fades into conceptual and grammatical incoherence (always a warning flag with this commenter’s material).
Lastly, given what I have seen of Eckerian material generally – and have examined and explained at length – I will not gratuitously presume that if only TMR had not edited the material “Dennis” submitted then everything would make sense with his material here. Frankly, even when he is left un-edited I have not seen any reliable capacity-for or inclination-toward accuracy and rational explication.
If you follow your own links, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04295c.htm. (as posted by you on Nov. 15 at 5:47 p.m..) You will find Constantine is only a saint in other rights not the Roman Catholic Church, [edited by moderator]. Admit it. you are wrong again, [edited by moderator].
P.S. Otherwise Constantine would always be addressed as St. Constantine the great. He is never referred to as such in the catholic church.. [edited by moderator]
Who's the real "abusenik" here the people who claim sexual RAPE at priests' hands or the "man" who consistantly abuses allready injured people? Who carries on the, now great, catholic tradition of injuring the all ready injured? Who ,with out a jot of contrary evidence, merely assumes every person posting here as a victim of your church wasn't really harmed.
You, P, simply carry on as your church has carried on, a tradition of branding all critics as liars. So everybody lies but you? That's believable, HA!
Of the complete trials undertaken by young victims against their abusors in your religion; How many were proven fraudulent? Next to none.
The vast majority of those trials were civil trials, in which the plaintiffs chose to bypass the criminal process. Of those civil trials, very few of them could stand the burden of proof required in the British system and European countries in general. The burden of proof required in civil trials in the USA is nil to none. Only in America can one make an unsubstantiated claim against another and get money.
~~Here is Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz:
"People have to come to understand that there is a large scam going on with personal injury attorneys, and what began as a serious effort has now expanded to become a huge money-making proposition."
This is a quote that TMR posted in Jan. 2011.
I'm up in years but I believe my eyesight to be good and although I am no english major I can read.
Where in her statement of 2 years ago does it reference anything about the increase of false accusations on a rise specific to clergy abuse ? To me this is a statement about ambulance chasing attorneys. Seems to me nothing more than an "opinion" TMR made thinking it had something to do with child abuse cases. I bet they meant well though.
At 1046 on the 30th JR – marvelously – undermines himself again. He refers to my own “links” (plural) but then only gives the second of the two links I gave. There is a method to this madness: the first link was a list of Catholic saints on which Constantine appears. The second of my two links – the one JR provides here – was specifically provided with my descriptor: “For reasons why he is a Saint, one can refer to the Catholic Encyclopedia here”. This second link mentions nothing about sainthood at all, but rather – as I noted (the 15th, 547PM, on the immediately previous article/thread) – was provided simply to provide background on his activities that would justify Sainthood.
And in this second link of mine – that JR repeats here – he might provide the (accurate) quotation from it as to where “you will find Constantine is only a saint in other rights not the Roman Catholic Church” [sic]. (Answer: he can’t because in that text it doesn’t exist for us to “find”.) Thus we wind up just where we were: JR has provided nothing but his own certainty as to the non-Sainthood of Constantine in the Church.
So JR has demonstrated his reliability (or rather the lack of it) once again.
And readers are welcome to make what they will of JR’s certainty and assurance (the 30th, 1112AM) that Constantine “is never referred to as such [i.e. as being a Saint] in the catholic church” [sic] He is included in a list of Catholic Saints, as I had originally noted. The fact that he is more widely thought-about in the Eastern, Orthodox Church simply reflects the fact that he governed from Constantinople (and not in Rome itself) and is therefore a home-town guy for them.
The value of this continuing exchange consists only in further eliciting demonstrations of JR’s cognitive issues and his qualities as a learner (let alone self-learner). I would never presume myself to be his teacher, but I am also developing a palpable sympathy for those who once found themselves faced with that task (or challenge).
Then on to his of the 30th at 1057AM.
First, very few “people” have ‘claimed’ “sexual rape” [exaggerated formatting omitted] in allegations against the Church or priests.
Second, we cannot very well characterize me as “the ‘man’ who consistantly abuses already injured people” since we haven’t really established that we are dealing on this site with anybody who has reliably been demonstrated to be “already injured” by such “sexual rape”. I have said before that there are indeed allegants who give clear indications of being damaged, but we cannot establish – nor has their own material and their story-telling helped in establishing – that they were damaged by the alleged abuse, rather than it being a case of a characterologically and/or otherwise damaged person taking advantage of the Stampede when the Anderson Strategies and its abettors and enablers whomped the Stampede up in the first place .
And as for the placing of “man” in quotation marks: oooh, am I being libeled here? The horror!
As for there not being “a jot of contrary evidence” (a locution that seems beyond JR’s personal linguistic capacities, I would say): there is a great deal of story-material, and the many problems with that material, explicated at length in comments, do not in any way enhance the probability that those stories are accurate and true; and indeed, the on-going versions simply work to reduce that probability even further.
I would also point out that in the links to further Schiltz material that I provided (at the prompting of “Dennis”, who introduced Judge Schiltz here in the first place), we see the Judge’s observation that the efforts to keep the details of the settlements under-seal or “secret” came not so much from the Church as from the torties and the allegants/payees themselves. Which does nothing to enhance any Abusenik credibility at all. And which, on the contrary, works clearly toward the possibility – or even probability – that the whole Game (“Dennis” has just quoted Dorothy Rabinowitz’s characterization of it as a “scam”) has had as its objective the garnering of payouts while evading any serious or sustained objective assessment whatsoever. Which would also – as I have often said before here – explain the sustained irritation on the part of the Abuseniks when their stories and claims are examined objectively here.
If JR cares to claim that none of the foregoing works to reduce (and substantially reduce) the probability of Abusenik credibility, he is welcome to entertain that thought. Readers can come to their own conclusions.
Nor is it accurate to say that I merely assume (“merely assumes”) that “every person posting here as a victim of your church wasn’t really harmed”. I have made no assumptions; rather I have made analyses and assessments, explaining my thoughts as I went along, and at great length. Instead, it is the Abuseniks who try to manipulate readers here into simply assuming that their material and claims are accurate and true. And yet the material they themselves have provided not only does nothing to enhance the credibility necessary to justify their manipulative demands to merely be assumed-to-be credible, accurate, and truthy … but also works strongly to reduce the probability of that credibility.
And as far as that “harmed” goes, I have discussed at length in prior comments – and this one here – the difficulty of determining the source and cause of the damaged characteristics that the Abuseniks clearly demonstrate and continue to demonstrate.
I am aware of very few trials so characterizable, although the only ones to receive serious and sustained analysis in the Catholic Abuse Matter were the recent two Philly trials (the second now under appeal) and that Santa Cruz/Santa Clara trial, both of which were discussed at length in comments on this site and neither of which demonstrated confidence-inspiring justicial procedure (the jury in the Santa Clara/Santa Cruz case, readers may recall, simply concluding that while the attacker of the old priest did indeed commit (quite possibly premeditated) assault and battery, they weren’t going to hold him responsible for it legally).
And – once again to repeat – it was precisely the (successful) plan of the Anderson Strategies to so ‘front-load’ the public that juries would override proper evidentiary considerations, with the complicity of judges and even legislators. As we saw in the Philly trials and in that California trial.
Which creates more than enough similarity with the now utterly discredited Pre-School Day-Care Satanic Ritual Abuse trials of the early 1980s (whose initial ‘successes’ – I would say – a) demonstrated the dangers of Stampede in sexual-abuse matters generally in this country by that time and b) alerted and alarmed the team that composed the Doyle Report in 1985, and c) inspired Anderson as he devised his own Strategies).
Readers are welcome to consider all this as they will.
Thus then to ‘dennis ecker’ (the 30th at 1120AM).
It opens with a quotation from TMR that has no initial quotation-mark to identify its beginning; I will presume that the entire sentence is the quotation.
Given the failure to properly mark the quotation, the subsequent claim (already somewhat self-dramatizing if not histrionic) that he believes his “eyesight to be good and although I am no english major I can read” [sic] appears to be somewhat over-generous. Especially if one considers that if one has such sustained and pervasive difficulty spelling, and if one has such sustained demonstrated difficulty in comprehending, and if one has such sustained demonstrated difficulty in expressing (and even formulating) one’s ideas, then whatever skills are left to support the ability to “read” are cast in doubt and are certainly weakened significantly. That’s – as “Dennis” would like to say – how it works. (The “it” here meaning the ability to read in all of its elements and aspects.)
Then there is an effort to separate the possibility or probability of “false accusations” from the phenomenon (“on a rise”, ominously) of “ambulance-chasing attorneys”.
First, it would clearly appear that the “opinion” that was “made” here was not originally made by TMR but by Dorothy Rabinowitz.
Second, given the length and acuity of her articles on the subject and the length to which she goes to explain her thoughts, we are dealing with something far more than mere “opinion” here. I have been over this before even on this thread: between a) a merely tossed-off opinion or assertion, delivered without substantiation and b) an extended assessment that proceeds from step to step, with the writer explaining his/her thinking for the reader as s/he goes along … there is a world of difference.
But this is a characteristic of the internet age: persons conflate the mere tossing-off of whatever they feel as an ‘opinion’ as somehow (magically) having the same weight and value and use as a carefully-developed and sustained assessment, with rational thought-process and illustrative and supporting references provided. Thus, to use imagery I have used before on this site, the blithe presumption that a bar-room back-and-forth is of equal value and use as a serious and careful study or assessment (as I describe it above).
Yet this is the role of the internet in the Stampede: not only can ‘stories’ be put forward in whatever florid descriptive detail that the teller desires, but others similarly-inclined can then toss-off whatever ‘opinions’ they have. And – but of course – nobody will ever be able to examine or prove anything.
We have also seen it on this thread in regard to JR and the Constantine material: his ‘opinion’, utterly unsupported, is in his mind as valid as the published material that contradicts his ‘opinion’; the certainty of his ‘opinion’ is equal in value to any researched and published material that contradicts it. (Thus too, the sly appeal for an arbitration, as if his ‘opinion’ and any contradictory ‘opinion’ were of equal weight and value, and only an arbiter can decide between the two). It is what it is, in the internet age.
And the “ambulance-chasing” attorney and the possibility (or probability) of false claims and allegations are hardly un-connected. To make lots of money, such an attorney would have to stretch to the utmost (and perhaps beyond) the ‘stories’ that his/her clients brought to the office, in order to compile enough (apparent) gravamen to file a non-frivolous Complaint. Which is an age-old strategy of “ambulance-chasing attorneys”, but upon which Anderson built his Strategies such that this once-limited or individual-case gambit could be multiplied and amplified while, simultaneously, the depth of the ‘pockets’ of the defendant (i.e. the Church) and its Insurers would i) encourage more “ambulance-chasing” attorneys to get into the game and ii) do whatever stretching was required with iii) the stories brought by prospective clients making allegations after being ‘encouraged’ by the (remunerative) success of prior cases, while also iv) dwelling in the sure and certain knowledge that such ‘stories’ would never be examined objectively and carefully and that v) if one ever were discovered in a false claim or other criminal misrepresentation, one would not suffer consequences for it.
That was the plan and it has (so far) worked very successfully indeed, to the tune of some billions. Thus Anderson took the old “ambulance” chasing and turned it into Church-chasing, although with the addition of a brilliantly engaged synergistic use of other trends and special-interests who for their own reasons were seeking to ‘chase’ the Church or otherwise inhibit and weaken the Church.
So that’s the relevance of the Rabinowitz work, I would say. Simply substitute Church-chasing for “ambulance-chasing” and you pretty much have the picture of what has been going on in the legal forum. All the usual dynamics then apply equally to the former as to the latter types of ‘chasing’.
As to the concluding bit (“I bet they meant well though”): we see here (presuming in this vaguely presented bit that “they” refers to the “ambulance-chasing attorneys” – whom I call ‘torties’) the effort to dismiss all misrepresentation as being OK because the attorney involved “meant well”. That is to say: since s/he was involved in so noble a cause, then some fudging of the stories in order to make them look better in a Complaint or a press-release is OK. This a variant of the Clohessy double-standard: if you’re doing what you’re doing in the service of ‘victims’ and against the Church, then it’s OK; but if the Church tries to defend itself – even by something as basic as engaging counsel (let alone bowing to the requirements imposed by Insurer’s counsel) – then the Church is just being more evil than it already is. That sort of thing. Which we see demonstrated nicely enough even in comments on this thread.
My own thought is that someday people are going to look back on the Stampede the same way we now look back on the Pre-School Day-Care Abuse Trials, wondering: How did we let all that get going and let it all go as far as it did? The same way that – on a smaller but even more intense and acute scale – the villagers of Salem finally got a grip on themselves and wondered the same thing.
(Not that everything then will be OK. While Judge Hathorne resigned and later wrote a confessional apology, the virulently pro-trials Judge Stoughton survived the Royal orders to shut the whole travesty down, and went on to become Governor of the colony (and I think even eventually got a town named for him up around there). But the hanged remained rather dead, on the authority of stampeded judges and courts and laws, and the word of accusers who when finally exposed in their confabulations and allegations just didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Which we already see has happened, as related by Judge Schiltz.
When was Constantine canonized in the rcc?
SOS from you on a new day.
Wikipedia says he's a saint in Eastern orthdoxy. Nothing about the rcc.Here's another link that says the same thing. That's if you read it. READ IT! Dope,http://www.antiochian.org/1110388342.
Fellow readers, it's this kind of irresponsable s*&t that P throws up again and again. Judge this clown by the few number of times, he's been correct about anything.
I congratulate TMR in its effort in trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. I or nobody else can deny there are those false accusations of abuse against innocent priests, it does happen. It can be compared to a bus getting into an accident and passer-bys jumping on that bus claiming injuries.
We have seen in the past (and present) the catholic church try and minimize the abuse of children by comparing it to the crimes of others. We now however are seeing a different spin as the catholic church trying to make their clergy the victims out of something they started.
I'm sorry but I can not shed a tear. These innocent priest who entered the priesthood because of that special calling and who meant to do nothing but good and are now being falsly accused can only turn back and look at the catholic church for them being the collateral damage of the churchs actions.
These claims of increased false accusations was started two years ago by an attorney who represents the catholic church and no other entity. Working off of only an opinion of an ex-FBI agent this attorney started another ball bouncing. Since that time we have seen no numbers or percentages comparing these false claims to the victimization of innocent children. We have seen no media coverage, but we are to blame that on the unwritten rule that reporters are not to write anything positive about clergy or the catholic church.
I think the criminals who file these false reports against innocent priests should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, the pain they too inflict should not be awarded, but the pain is no comparison to what a child suffers.
Different day, different Wig – but “Dennis” does a service here (the 30th, 839PM), I would say, in this uncharacteristically well-formatted comment: conceptually, what will the Abusenik response be to the general assessment of the Stampede contained in this TMR article and the comments that look at the Stampede?
The Abusenik response is that we are all simply “trying to make a mountain out of a molehill”.
Buses, he observes – and not inaccurately – have accidents and some by-standers will jump on the wreck and claim they were in it when it crashed (and are thus ‘victims’). There’s something to that point.
But in a bus wreck we have several elements that we don’t have in the usual Catholic Abuse Matter allegation and claim: a) we have the undeniable evidence of the wrecked bus and b) we have a much better chance that somebody at the scene or on the bus witnessed the false-claimant climb aboard while the dust was still clouding the scene, and c) we might discover – through proper and competent investigation – clear evidence that the false-claimant (alleging to be a ‘victim’) had actually been in a store down or across the street making a purchase at the actual moment of the crash.
But these are elements that we precisely do not have in the Stampede legal cases. Instead we have a claim of victimization but no equivalent of the smoking bus-wreck, no witnesses who actually saw the false-claimant sneaking onto the bus, and – worst of all – no proper investigation.
And yet in the Stampede the Anderson Strategies have figured ways to leap over all of these problems: a) the story presented by the (gratuitously presumed) ‘victim’ must be considered as valid evidence of the ‘bus-wreck’; b) there were no witnesses to the allegant’s actually climbing aboard the ‘wrecked bus’ (which ‘wrecked bus’, in the Stampede, as I said, we also don’t have); and c) there is no competent investigation because – in Victimist/Stampede dogma – to investigate is simply to re-victimize.
And to that we would also have to add the vital d): the public has already been ‘front-loaded’ to imagine that all or most bus-drivers are merely bus-wrecks waiting to happen, who have been kept on the job by bosses who simply shuffle them around from route to route and ‘cover-up’ this general problem and then try to ‘cover-up’ the ‘cover-up’.
But then – nor can the Wig cover-up the weaknesses here – “Dennis” loses control of his thought (or starts to veer from it as it takes him in uncongenial directions): he introduces from beyond his initial comparison (with the bus-wreck) a point about “the catholic church try and minimize the abuse of children by comparing it to the crimes of others”.
First, what does he mean by “comparing [the abuse of children] to the crimes of others”? Does he mean A) that the Church tries to compare child-abuse to stealing candy from children?
Or does he mean B) that some commenters (I don’t recall any official Church pronouncements by the Church; perhaps the Abuseniks – for their own convenience – like to lump official Church statements and commenters together as both equally representing official Church positions) have pointed out that the crime of the sexual-abuse of children (recalling that the majority of ‘child abuse’ is not sexual – a point discussed in comments on this site a while back) is not limited to the Church?
But if (B) then I can’t see how one is ‘minimizing’ a problem by pointing out how widespread it actually is. But of course, for the Abuseniks, their real subject isn’t actually the abuse (or sexual-abuse) of children, but rather their real subject and objective (and target) is the Catholic Church.
Leading to the second point: we actually haven’t seen that many demonstrated evidences of Catholic clerical child-sexual-abuse, have we? We have innumerable stories, claims and allegations, and even more innumerable commentaries on those stories, claims and allegations; but we have seen a) few cases brought to trial and b) conducted in such a manner as to produce a sense of confidence and integrity in the judicial and investigatory processes.
Yes, we have seen some jury decisions for conviction – but we saw those as well in the old Pre-School Day-care Satanic Ritual Abuse trials 30 and more years ago … and we all know what happened then.
To which we would then also have to add ‘Ken W’s point on this thread that the evidentiary bar is lower in civil cases (i.e. lawsuits) than in criminal cases; although there have been few actual cases tried even in the civil arena, thanks as much to the actuarial calculations of Insurer-attorneys as to Church defense counsel, and we have also seen (courtesy of Judge Schiltz) that it was the allegants and the torties who wanted the records put under seal and thus made ‘secret’, if you will – which actually constitutes its own kind of ‘cover-up’, does it not?
Nor have we seen – in such document releases as the media made at one time – any clear evidence that what most Ordinaries were doing was indeed a deliberate, conscious effort at ‘cover-up’. We have seen various documents construed and characterized as such by various Abusenik elements, but when we actually read those documents they don’t actually quite demonstrate or prove any such thing. (Have we seen any formal or even informal documents to this effect: Hey, this guy is an indubitable clinical pedophile and voracious child-rapist and everybody here at the Chancery has known it for decades and now he’s got his umpteenth complaint against him so let’s just move him to another parish again and keep him out of the hands of the police and let’s put all his files in the secret vault and make sure the housekeeper doesn’t get a gander at it.)
And we have seen Abuseniks even on this site and on this thread claim that nobody has a right to know anything about their case except the story they chose to tell (and swore to under oath). Although we are to accept that story or those stories without question or run the risk of being tarred with various epithets.
But now, continuing his conceptual digression in the same paragraph, “Dennis” claims that “we now however are seeing a different spin as the catholic church trying to make their clergy the victims out of something they started” [sic].
First, we aren’t really sure – and have precious little clear evidence – as to just what the Catholic Church and its clergy “started”.
Second, we have no clear evidence whatsoever that the handling (such as it may have been in certain cases) of problematic individual priests was the result of any comprehensive, premeditated general plan. Whereas we have D’Antonio’s exhaustive book about how (what I would call) the Anderson Strategies and Stampede were carefully and with great fore-thought put together and then deployed. And those Strategies relied-upon and sought through numerous stratagems and plans to derange the justice system so as to clear the Stampede’s path by removing or weakening all manner of preventive elements precisely in place to preclude any such Stampede in law, jurispraxis, and public opinion.
So the Abusenik story here slyly tries to change the focus: because it’s not about the Church trying to “minimize” by claiming to be victimized by the legitimate and proper legal efforts to apply justice-doing principles to the behavior of its clergy and hierarchy.
Rather, it’s about the fact that the Church and the clergy and hierarchy have largely been made the actual targets of a deliberately constructed and fomented Stampede which through the operation of its own stratagems in the pursuit of its own objectives has created serious, profound, and corrosive derangements in law and has led to serious and widespread public misinformation and – I would say – to numerous miscarriages of justice, such that we really don’t know if there ever was a crisis-level or epidemic-level clerical child-sex abuse problem to begin-with in the first place .
Thus I am saying here that the Church is not trying to hide or cover-up its role in a bus-wreck (for which numerous persons have claimed – and been remunerated – for being ‘victims’ on that bus). Rather we are trying to find out if there was a bus-wreck to begin-with; and then – although they have taken many steps to prevent this examination – the extent of the false-claims and false-victims who inserted themselves into the still undemonstrated bus-wreck that we don’t actually know actually took place.
Therefore, “Dennis” continues, he “can not shed a tear” [sic] and advises the good and innocent priests who become falsely-accused to blame the Church for all of this. Readers may make of that advice what they will. Those priests were simply “collateral damage”.
And note that queasy governmental phrase “collateral damage”. So perhaps we might legitimately treat Abusenik claims and stories with the same skepticism we now apply to government press-releases and claims about civilian casualties in military operations? And approach Abusenik press-releasers with the same attitude with which we approached (and approach) government spokes-types claiming this, that, and the other thing? Now there’s an interesting thought indeed.
We are then informed – with no supporting documentation or explanation – that “these claims of increased false accusations was started two years ago by an attorney who represents the catholic church and no other entity” [sic]. (Beware the ungrammatical with this allegedly professionally-trained commenter; his grammatical mistakes seem to function in the same way as Pinocchio’s nose.)
By entering the phrase ‘false accusations against catholic priests’ into a search engine one gets over 6 million responses, dating back – as far as I could get the engine to go – to 2002. So i) there goes the “was started two years ago” bit and ii) the subject certainly seems to have been one of widespread concern for something that is asserted here to have been “started” by a single attorney who made a comment somewhere only two years ago.
But I would also say that the conceptual potential for such mischief was rife from the get-go – long before 2002, once the evidentiary principles precisely put in place to prevent false-accusations were deranged and undermined in order to make room for Victim-stories that precisely proffered no evidence.
And I would say that if we cannot accept) or even consider?) “only an opinion of an ex-FBI agent” then by the same token we certainly cannot accept the myriad un-evidenced stories, claims, assertions and allegations of abuse, supported by the myriad unsupported stories, claims ,assertions and allegations of Abuseniks seeking to make all those myriad un-evidenced stories, claims ,assertions and allegations seem perfectly true and accurate (while seeking simultaneously to prevent any examination of them).
Thus we have seen “no numbers or percentages comparing these false claims to the victimization of innocent children” (notice the insertion of the emotionally inciting phrase here) because a) we have not been allowed to examine the records or evidence of their claims (which were specifically made “secret” by the torties and payees) and b) the media have demonstrated a remarkably incurious attitude toward the subject (which incuriosity is precisely their scripted requirement in the Anderson Strategies).
And in regard to the media: had they conducted investigation and reported a low-rate of false claims then that would be one thing (although we would still have to examine those reports ourselves). But instead we have – as “Dennis” conveniently fails to notice – no substantive and sustained reporting or investigation done whatsoever (although Dorothy Rabinowitz stands out here, though there have been few media types who have followed her).
Thus, the Abuseniks – having benefitted greatly from the combined deranging and information-suppressing stratagems of the Stampede – now claim in the accents of Goody-Two-Shoes that there is no evidence of those derangements. This is the equivalent of a proverbial parent-murderer presenting him/herself to the mercy of the court as an orphan victimized by the sudden death of his/her parents.
And once again, the media focus issue does not revolve around media coverage of the Church generally, but rather specifically around the matter of this phantom ‘bus wreck’ of widespread, pervasive, even programmatic Catholic clergy abuse.
And then back to the ‘children’ – who are used by the Abuseniks and the Anderson Strategies like bank-hostages to prevent interference with the absconding of the swag. They are used here like baby harp-seals once were in commercials and ads for this or that cause. But I say that injustice perpetrated on behalf of “the children” is no less injustice than injustice perpetrated “for the protection of Reich und Volk”. And the dynamics used to effect that perpetration are the same in both instances.
And the consequences will also be the same: the derangement of the rule of law, using the pretextual claim of ‘protection’ against great ‘threats’ that – upon examination – seem not to have existed in the first place.
If there are – as I have no doubt there are and were – specific instances of child sexual-abuse (by clergy or others in this country) then the proper operation of the legal system can be the only response. But to derange that legal system on the basis (or pretext) of the claimed emergency’ has historically served no better purpose than to utterly and fundamentally derange the rule of law itself – and a country set on that course has no hopeful prognosis at all.
As usual, Publion, you have provided us with a sincere and complete evaluation of the entire picture. Thank you.
Don't address me anymore untill you apologize [edited by moderator]
HaHaHa, Why do I know who you are talking about without asking you.
Its like one of those annoying gnats when your trying to eat food outside.
I know he is annoying but Jim you are the only one who acknowleges what he has to say.
You have been very respectful but I scroll right past anything he has to say. If there is a God he will eventually go the way of his once sidekick. What was his name again ? I think you called him princess.
You have great days ahead my friend.
p.s. I'm still waiting to see some numbers in this increase in false accusation.
Well – in regard to JR’s of the 1st at 1231PM – I followed the Wiggy orders to read it.
On that Antiochan site the link leads to an article (entitled “Constantine the Great: Roman Emperor, Christian Saint, History’s Turning Point”) by a writer named Robert Arakaki, who lists some of the claims made about Constantine and Christianity in the book version of The Da Vinci Code (claims oddly familiar to readers who have followed some of JR’s recent comments here). Says Mr. Arakaki: “Personally, I thought that the book was a lot of fun to read. But as Church history it was laughable.”
He continues, in a nice demonstration of analytical balance and careful distinction, that he does not blame the book’s author, since that author was writing “fiction” (and not history). Rather, Mr. Arakaki says, “the problem comes when people confuse fiction and non-fiction”.
But this confusion (I have used the term ‘conflation’ in regard to the Stampede) is precisely what I say has happened in the Stampede: the ‘fiction’ of the stories has been forcibly conflated-with or confused-with the historical non-fiction of actual reality. Thus, in the legal forum, a story remains ‘fiction’ – if you will – until it is thoroughly investigated and clearly and demonstrably established to be ‘history’ and non-fiction.
Or at least – in the legal forum, ideally – until there is enough material to convince a jury acting within the parameters of evidentiary principles that there is sufficient probability that the story is not mere fiction but is actually, as far as the legal process can determine, the actual history of the alleged event. But again – this is precisely where Anderson Strategy stratagems of a) ‘front-loading’ the public (from whose ranks jurors will eventually be drawn) and b) weakening core evidentiary principles … have worked to derange the integrity and indeed the legitimacy of the justicial process. The Anderson Strategies have damaged the integrity of every field that they have drawn into the Stampede: legislative, investigative, justicial, and media.
Lastly, in regard to Mr. Arakaki’s material: he is writing from an Eastern Rite point of view on what is apparently a site which deals with Eastern Rite and Orthodox matters. He thus discusses Constantine’s Sainthood in the Eastern Rite but makes no reference to anything about Constantine’s sainthood-status in the Latin (or Roman or Western) Rite. That topic is not part of his consideration in this article of his.
I then went to Wiki, where the entry for “Constantine the Great” includes in its first sentence the statement “also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine”. And while the Wiki article in a note then claims that he is not revered as a saint in the Latin Church and that there are several saints named Constantine, yet the Catholic.org website’s list of Catholic saints includes (under ‘C’ for Constantine the Great) an entry precisely for that Constantine who was the Roman Emperor.
All of which I said at the outset of this matter on the previous thread; and I also noted that while Constantine “was revered as a saint, especially in the Eastern Church”, yet that “especially” does not work to exclude him from a list of Catholic (Latin Rite) saints but simply acknowledges that as a hometown boy he enjoys a more forthright public status as a saint in the East (Constantinople) than he did in the West (Latin Rite of Rome). I also note here that this Catholic list does not include an exhaustive list of Eastern Rite and Orthodox saints and many of them are not included in this Latin-Rite list; yet Constantine the Great is included in this Latin-rite list – not because he is a saint in the Eastern Rite list, but because he is a saint in the Latin Rite.
And as I mentioned at the outset of this matter, he became a saint in the same era and in the same way as Saints Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Mary Mother of God. (The historical existence of several of the foregoing, we recall, has been doubted by JR in recent comments on this site.) For further response JR can go back to my original comments and we can save everybody’s time here.
Thus, too, we see yet again – especially in the marvelously revelatory epithets JR tosses at others here – exactly what we are dealing with. Which is of use on this site primarily as an indicator of the type of mentalities who have been lured to the surface by the Anderson Strategies (without, of course, Anderson or any of the torties actually having to personally dirty themselves by directly voicing support for the material those mentalities spew). And yet these mentalities – and their stories and allegations and claims and opinions and certainties, and their blithe presumptions that they know how to process and assess material – constitute a presence on the internet. And by operation of the Anderson media strategems, they are considered reliable evidence that Surely What They Claim About The Church Is All True.
I would strongly disagree.
And so, “fellow readers”, in conclusion (ooooh – it’s fun to deliver declamatory declarations in print!) – and with reference to JR’s of the 1st at 1241 – I would point out that I have rarely – and certainly not recently – actually ‘addressed’ JR in comments but rather have referred to him in the third-person. My reasons for this are that a) I don’t really consider interaction with JR to be any sort of rational exchange or dialog, and b) I want to try to reduce as much as possible presenting such direct-address as second-person grammar would create and in so doing ignite any highly flammable primitivities.
And as we see here, not even that bit of preventive prudence always manages to do the job.
But I require no apologies and I do not consider myself libeled or otherwise dissed, insulted, victimized or re-victimized. We are here on this site to discuss, not to find pretexts for personal agendas and issues.
LOL! "Highly flamable primitivities" LOL!
BOO!
~~
THE MYTH OF FALSE CLAIMS AND ACCUSATIONS
OF CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE
Thomas P. Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.
March 2007 – Revised July 2008
The John Jay College Study reported that between 1950 and 2004 there were 10,667 documented accusations and reports made of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics in the United States. There have been no similar studied done in other countries presently reporting widespread clergy abuse such as Ireland, the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It is widely believed that since it is accepted that only about 30-35% of those sexually abused ever report their abuse that the actual number of clergy abusers is much higher.
The Catholic Church authorities have regularly claimed that there are a significant number of false claims and false accusations. This assertion is often used by the bishops and by state Catholic conferences in their strategies to defeat any attempts at legislative reform.
No Catholic diocese nor any other source asserting that there have been significant numbers of false claims has provided any documentary evidence. In fact no one who has said that there are a great number of false claims has even produced any anecdotal or unofficial evidence.
Some have claimed that the legislative “window” which was opened in California resulted in a flood of false claims. In fact there were about 1200 new civil suits alleging sexual abuse as a result of the window. Of that number about 800-850 were claims against a Roman Catholic diocese of Religious Order. The attorneys who represented the claimants reported that there were only 3 claims that were false. These were instances when the person alleging abuse was actually making a false report.
There have been thousands of civil suits in the United States alone since 1985. The majority of these have been filed since 2002. Most of these end in settlement arrived at either through mediation or through decisions reached by the parties and their lawyers. A significant number of cases have been dismissed by the courts. None have been dismissed as a false claim. All have been dismissed because of the Statute of Limitations. This means that the plaintiff did not file the claim within the prescribed time limits as set by the State statute.
Please, if anyone can direct me to information that can contradict the information here and shows what this article also uncovered that there is no documentary evidence official or unofficial to the claims that false accusations of clergy is the new get rich quick scam let me know. Otherwise this blog has no merit. Put it to sleep for another two years and we will address it again in 2016. Maybe then there will be more proof to the accusations.
Dennis, I appreciate your contributions to the site.
But this might be the dumbest thing you’ve ever posted.
You mean a Church-suing contingency lawyer says that there aren’t many false claims? Give me a break. What else is he going to say?
And Doyle is flat-out lying – or terribly misinformed – to claim that dioceses do not record false accusations.
The Church’s annual audit report records DOUBLE-DIGIT percentages of false claims every year! (And that does NOT include the claims from previous years that are later declared to be bogus.)
http://www.themediareport.com/2012/04/11/ap-rachel-zoll-reuters-andrew-stern/
There are very few voices that have been more discredited than Doyle. I am also sure that since 2008, when he wrote his piece of garbage, that he has become aware of the stats and information about false accusations that we have posted on this site.
Grade: F.
If P was a responsable poster and person, doesn't the readership here think he would race to admit he was wrong when he so often is? He never admits flaws in his arguments. EVER! This is a surer sign of rigidity than truth seeking.
TMR
You might be right because neither one of us knows the truth.
You are asking me and other readers to believe or not to believe the church-suing contingency lawyer but in the same breath you are asking us to believe the opinion of an individual.
Whose right, who is wrong ? Neither of us. I do know if priests are accused of something they did not do its wrong and the people who do it should be punished. I don't believe however its happening at the rate you or the catholic church believe it is.
Case in point look at the comment from Mark T on 11/28 at 03:31. Someone reported what he saw as a child being raped. Although that individual was wrong is that another case of false accusation ? He was doing what he thought was right to protect a child. He had nothing to gain.
Would you not do the same ?
When both sides are honest in their reporting then you or I can tell the other you were wrong. Until then this will be an on-going subject that will be debated.
Here's part of an L.A. Times 2pt. series on Mahoney. http://graphics.latimes.com/mahony/
Featuring a photo of the one-and-only Jim Roberston!
The worst photo ever by the by. I've hit the gym since then.
the woman i was embracing in shock. Had found out she had passed up a 3 million dollar settlement 10 yrs before. She passed it up because she refused to remain silent. She had been passed between 5 Phillipine priests and had a child by one. All the priests were sent back to the Phillipines by the L.A. archdiocese. She was finally given a settlement of less than 5% of what she had passed up because she refused to not tell the truth. I do not know why her settlement was so small.
If anything published in the Times about Roger Doger creator of the Taj Mahoney, is libelous he has every right and should sue them. There's one small problem he was truthfully written about in this article.
It's a shame really. He had real potential as a decent cardinal; the problem was he was found out to be an accomplice to felony crimes found to be criminal in his own hand written notes..
Refer to me in the fourth person as in NOT AT ALL!
And Constantine is still not a saint in the latin rite. Or he would always be refered to as a saint rather than as an emperor. Saints out rank emperors. The church is big on rank.
Tom Doyle is the only hope your church has had in this scandal. The only hope because he and SNAP are letting you down softly. They work for the church not victims. Could they be anymore general in their focus? Could they be any more banal?. They only appear where the press appears around a problem and then they are both there to handel it for the church's benefit..
Alleluia! It's handle not handel, sorry.
A marvelous smorgasbord indeed.
The first thing to note about the “Dennis” comment of the 1st at 233PM is the queasy and cheesy fact that it is here at all. It is ostensibly directed to “Jim” (aka “James” aka “Mr. Robertson”), and yet although these two have their own private communications (JR, we recall, was advised off-site by “Dennis” that “Dennis” wanted us to see several links, in addition to that odd bit about JR posting the comment in which – if the story these two cooked up is to be believed – “Dennis” is addressing himself and talking to himself) “Dennis” chooses to have a conversation with his bud here in front of all of us. This is a matinee being put on specifically for our benefit (so to speak).
You finish reading a gambit like this and simply wonder at the shrewdness of the Anderson Strategies – that they would intentionally tap-into these lower levels of mentalities out there and down there in the internet ocean, luring them up to the surface. Which is not to say that what we have seen on this site is the most queasy or virulent (although one commenter has had his personal information demanded-from him, as we may recall).
But I cannot stop being thankful – as I said before. If one were merely to claim that such mentalities are so vivid a presence in the Abusenik universe, most rational readers would think that it couldn’t really be that bad. So to have such reliably productive ‘wells’ here, happily pumping up their effluvia on a regular basis for all to see … one can only give thanks.
As to the content of the material:
First, I would note the introductory “HaHaHa”: I would say that we are seeing here not a Wig but the actual default reality of this commenter. On top of the stunning coarseness revealed in the recent comment bits about ‘branding’ and ‘animals’ we now see the palpable juvenility and molten un-ripeness (primitiveness, perhaps). The take-away for readers: the next time we encounter one of the Wigs from the collection (the Serious and Competent, the Soberly and Maturely Saddened, the Righteously Enraged, and on and on) we need only recall the actual mentality behind that Wig, and factor it into our assessments.
In the “Dennis” universe, calling people “Dope”, “Fool!” and “Idiot” apparently qualifies for the encomium that “you have been very respectful”. Charming.
Whether “Dennis” doth “scroll right past anything [I have] to say” is neither here nor there, since as I noted in prior recent comments, my purpose is to examine his material, not to engage him personally.
And then the queasy (to say the least) snark about gender – to which both of these two seem to revert with a queasy regularity.
And then “Dennis” advises “Jim” that “you have great days ahead my friend” [sic] – which need only be left up there where it was put.
But then a “p.s.” (is this a teen-y diary or a letter?): “Dennis” is still waiting to see some numbers in this increase in false accusation” (he has then, marvelously, read my material and not ‘scrolled-past’ it, has he not? – and so much for his coherence and reliability). But first: my point has not been about an “increase”, but rather about a) the conceptual elements which from the get-go should have indicated the high probability of false accusations (especially given i) the large remunerative possibilities and ii) the small possibility of being held to account if discovered in falsely-accusing) and about b) the developing trends that lead toward increasing skepticism as regards the presumptive-credibility of allegations in light of the possibility (perhaps even probability) of their falsity.
And second: I have specifically noted the operation of the Anderson Strategy dynamics that have precisely and deliberately prevented any assessment or examination that would enable us to get a clear picture of a situation whose basic conceptual dynamics and elements give more than sufficient cause for concern as to the lodging of false claims and allegations and stories (which, of course, were in many cases sworn-to in court documents in order to create the eligibility for all that nice remuneration).
But “Dennis” smoothly ignores all of that. Yet surely we understand the value of this element in the Anderson Strategies. Let us imagine, say, a person who used false claims i) to become eligible for remuneration and simultaneously ii) to obtain honorable (so to speak) release from a job for which, say, he was manifestly poorly-performing and which promised no further career success. Human weakness being what it so often is, one could clearly grasp – I think – why such a person (or persons) would not want to have those claims (sworn-to under pains and penalties of perjury, perhaps) later examined. It is a most familiar (which it not to say justifiable) human gambit, is it not?
At any rate, and as I have said in prior comments on this thread: for Abuseniks, having already benefitted from the Anderson Strategies (intentionally designed to suppress examination of claims), to then claim that there are no statistics and no reports indicating the pervasiveness of false claims is disingenuous in the extreme.
But it’s a neat game, on its surfaces – so long as nobody gets to examine those (possibly perjurious) claims.
Then on the 1st at 1120PM “Dennis” proffers without comment some bits from the still-Father Doyle, dating back half-a-decade. Although, actually, he does comment – though without going to the trouble of using quotation marks to separate the Doyle material from his own. (And are we really to believe that this commenter was successfully trained in some level of accurate assessment and reporting, verbal and written?)
TMR has already responded to this 1120PM comment and covered the main points.
But I would point out these further bits. First, in the initial paragraph Doyle carefully hedges himself by saying that “it is widely believed that since it is accepted” – which clearly undermine any confidence in the author’s own certainty about the claim he is making (and constitute warning-flags that the author is trying to sound inflammatory without actually leaving himself open to a charge that he has used insufficiently demonstrated facts as if they were sufficiently established). And where is it “widely believed” and by whom is it “accepted”?
I further note that this “30-35%” figure is not one I have come across in my reading. And even here on this site, the number “100,000” has been tossed around, reflecting the queasy presumption and extrapolation that there are (or are presumed to be) 9 unreported cases for each 1 reported case, thus roughly 11,000 reported claims yields 100,000 unreported claims. Doyle here is oddly restrained in his numbers; perhaps because he doesn’t want to be too-directly associated with the more conventionally-accepted (but queasy) ‘100,000’ claims. In any event, we get no supportive evidence for the credibility of his percentages here, but – tah-dahhhhh! – rather must merely rely on his own (slyly hedging) assertion.
And Doyle too then goes for the gambit that there is no evidence of many false claims. Which is a point I have dealt with above in this comment and at greater length in prior comments on this thread: there is no evidence because a) the allegants and payees themselves (through their torties) have squelched the possibility of any such examination and b) the media have largely not allowed themselves to conduct such investigations. All of which does nothing to reduce the possibility or probability that – given the structuring of the Stampede by the Anderson Strategies – the existence of false-accusations may be very significant indeed. But we have seen in such material as we have been able to examine here that none of the stories or claims or allegations hold up under even the basic analysis applied in comments on this site.
Doyle then goes on to consider the “legislative ‘window’ which was opened in California” (referring to the first one; the second attempted one failed to become law). As TMR has observed, it is fatuous in the extreme to take as reliable a tort-attorney’s assessment as to the veracity and reliability of his clients’ claims (this would be like taking the now-infamous ‘Five O’Clock Follies’ reports by MACV as reliable indicators of how things were going in Vietnam back in the day). A tortie is surely not going to opine that a whole lot of those claims are quite possibly false (it would cost him the case and his cut of the swag, and also place him in professional jeopardy, including possible self-incrimination). So what do you think a tortie is going to say? – Of course he is going to say with a straight face that all of the claims were brave, courageous, accurate and true.
But then, as it turns out, we have had a chance on this site to examine at least one of those stories on this site (from the large LA case enabled precisely by that CA statute-of-limitations window) and nobody here needs to be reminded of how that turned out in terms of credibility, probability, and reliability.
Doyle then tries to make the legal-sounding point that none of the cases “have been dismissed as a false claim” (and instead – conveniently and deceptively – that such dismissals as there have been were merely the result of expired statutes-of-limitation). But claims are not dismissed as “false” – they have to be demonstrated by clear evidence to have been false … but in a long-ago case (where perhaps also the accused is deceased or senile) such as were enabled by the CA SOL ‘window’ there precisely was no evidence (and instead, only the story and allegation).
Thus the Anderson Strategy works marvelously: A) the further back the claim, the less evidence, and so the less chance that a false-accusation can be proven to be false; while B) the public has been so ‘front-loaded’ by stories (and by Victimist/Abusenik manipulations about examination-being-revictimization) that the public (and potential jurors) now merely presume against the accused (of course, they would rather think of it as presuming in-favor-of the ‘victim’) because – doncha know? – ‘everybody knows’ that priests are pedophiles and pervs. Phooey. Phooey and baloney.
And Doyle is trained in the law so the gambit in this paragraph is hardly a mistake. It is a willful effort to misrepresent the legal and actual realities involved, using his presumptive authority as a canonist and a priest. Phooey and baloney again.
And we now know from Federal Judge Schiltz, with all of his experience in the Catholic Abuse Matter, that it was the torties and payees who wanted the settlements sealed and made “secret” – and why would that be? And here I have been saying that the strong probability exists that those parties want to keep their stories and so forth “secret” precisely so that they cannot later be examined (and we have seen what happens to Abusenik stories when they are given even modest examination). Doyle mentions none of this.
I am now going to presume that the final paragraph in this comment (beginning “Please”) is not from Doyle but rather from “Dennis” (wearing for this midnight show the bouffant Wig of Earnest and Sober and Competent Inquiry, although – as always – with the Teeth of Nastiness embedded in the bangles).
The entire paragraph is undermined by the material I have presented above. “Dennis” is trying to run the old Orphan gambit of the Abuseniks: having ensured that no evidence can exist, they then pray “please, if anyone can direct” them to the evidence. Yah. We’ve seen this bit for what it is now. But I have no doubt we’ll see it tried again.
Lastly, JR’s of the 2nd at 1040AM: He is now stuck in his own wallow – he can only ignore everything that contradicts his claim and demand that his claim simply be acknowledged as accurate. (I suspect that he’s had some success with this in earlier life-experiences.) It’s one thing to be “rigid” because one dare not deal with one’s ignorance, and another thing to stick with truth when it’s been demonstrated, no matter how many epithets and eructations come sailing across the screen.
If he cares to submit a list of what I have been wrong about, or a list of “flaws in [my] arguments” he is welcome to do so. But readers are advised not to postpone the holidays while awaiting those lists.
P receives as much respect as he is due. Liars; prefabricators; apologists; dupes and dopes get exactly what they are due. Zip.
~~Indeed, current accusations against Catholic priests are rare.
If this quote was found on TMR on April 11, 2012 a year after the accusation by Attorney Steier and his ex-FBI agent how can there be an increase in false accusations ?
Fact and fiction, fact and fiction guys.
Lets debate the catholic school in Chicago cutting hair of its students to see if they are dropping back a beer.
At 316PM on the 2nd we see yet another Play from the Book – but it is one we have seen before: “Dennis” now goes for what I would call ‘equivalence’. That is to say: we really don’t know enough about the matter to know which of us is right and which is wrong.
As I had said in a prior comment on this thread: Dubitate Abuseniks dona ferentes (tr. Don’t trust Abuseniks bearing gifts).
This very uncharacteristic reasonableness (or so it would seem; see below) exhibited here by “Dennis” is actually nothing of the sort.
He seeks to equate the doubting of “the church-suing contingency lawyer” and the doubting of “the opinion of an individual”. Yet, as I said in my prior comment on this thread, there are grave reasons why such a lawyer could not possibly be considered a reliable assessor of his clients’ claims and allegations. There are no such grave reasons why “the opinion of an individual” (the retired FBI agent, presumably) might not be considered a worthwhile source, to be factored into readers’ assessment.
So the challenge as to credibility and probability posed by each of the two examples here is not an ‘equal’ challenge: the attorney example presents a profound challenge from the get-go by the very nature of the attorney’s situation; the individual (retired FBI agent) does not pose anywhere near such a challenge to credibility and probability.
But “Dennis” has killed this horse and now he’s going to get his money’s worth out of flogging it: the Wig of Bemused Philosophy declaims about “whose right, who is wrong” [sic] and – with breath-taking generosity – proclaims “neither of us”. Which actually serves to absolve (or self-absolve) “Dennis”, the credibility and probability of whose position has been in the deepest difficulty. Neat.
Having been unable to actually handle his end of the ‘debate’, “Dennis” will suddenly but generously proclaim both sides equal (or equally unable to continue) and thus put an end to the squabbling.
If – given all the elements, factors, and dynamics that have been noted and discussed here – “Dennis” still doesn’t think “its happening at the rate you or the catholic church believe it is” [sic] then readers can factor that into their assessment of “Dennis” as they will.
We are then – again, uncharacteristically – given reference to an actual bit of material we might actually review, i.e. the comment by ‘Mark T’. Here, “Dennis” (who is apparently on an ‘equalizing’ joyride in this comment) tries to equate a) a dismissed report of a rape with b) a “false accusation” as we have been discussing it on this site.
But in example (a) a person (incredibly as it may seem) thought s/he saw “a priest raping a child” and reported it to the police. (Which, actually, i) only goes to show you how problematic even eyewitness testimony is, as well as ii) giving everybody pause to consider how the definition of rape affects the reporting, as well as iii) providing the prospect of a priest (identifiable because he was wearing a Roman collar?) raping a child in public view – although, in regard to (iii), the actual original article referred only to “inappropriate touching” by a priest known to the observer/report-maker.)
But in example (b) – the “false accusation” that “Dennis” puts forward – is something very different indeed. We are not talking in (b) about a single momentary observation, reported in good faith (no matter how mistaken – even weirdly so – it might be). Rather, in (b) we are talking about an entire process, extended over time, with deliberation and forethought, of constructing a story, selecting and engaging a tortie, swearing to the story’s truth under pains and penalties of perjury, accepting training in presenting-oneself and embellishment of one’s claims by staff, and then being prepared to testify on the stand as to that originally concocted allegation-story. (I presume here that one needs no special training in going down to the tortie’s office, picking up a check, and going to one’s bank.)
Thus Mark T’s (a) and “dennis ecker’s (b) are almost completely non-comparable.
And thus readers can hold up to the examining light as they wish the following rhetorical question: “would you not do the same?”. In regard to (b), I think more than a few have indeed gone and done the same.
Then, in a further episode of equalizing, “Dennis” – whose position (i.e. the Abusenik) has been demonstrated to have very serious credibility and probability problems with both its content and its promoters – now doth declaim and pronounce as follows: i) he and DP are both being limited by those nasty inaccurate reporters on both sides of the issue; ii) thus neither he nor DP can tell the other ‘you were wrong’; iii) but until inaccurate reporters are done-away-with (which, alas, may be never); then (iv) he and DP will be equals in debate.
Thus “Dennis” here has constructed for himself a neat pile of blocks whereby he seeks to promote himself from Dubious Proponent Of A Profoundly Improbable Position to Equal Debater Of Un-provable Issues … which is quite a promotion indeed, considering his present status. And he seeks to do that while simultaneously appearing to be nothing more than the Voice of Sweet and Generous Reason (doubtless there’s a Wig in the box for this).
And I point out that “debate” requires sustained conceptual engagement on a particular point. What the Playbook requires – and the Abuseniks here exemplify – is precisely not debate but rather the avoidance-of and squelching-of and distracting-from debate.