Masters of malice: SNAP leaders David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris
Lest there be any remaining doubt about the nastiness and true motives of the anti-Catholic group SNAP, the organization is now publishing on its web site the personal phone numbers and email addresses of priests who have merely been accused of abuse.
TheMediaReport.com has examined two recent media statements where SNAP has published such personal information. In both cases, the accusations against the clerics date back many decades, and neither cleric has ever been charged criminally.
Below are redacted screenshots from recent media statements composed by SNAP leaders David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris:
[We are not linking to SNAP's media statements and have redacted identifying information in order to protect the privacy of the priests.]
We cannot imagine any other reason that SNAP would publish priests' personal phone numbers and email addresses except to incite the group's followers and the public to contact the clerics and harass them. Publishing priests' personal contact information obviously does nothing to benefit victims in any way.
This practice by SNAP is disgraceful and only adds more evidence to the fact that SNAP is a mean-spirited and bigoted organization whose real agenda has absolutely nothing to do with sex abuse.
[See also: *SNAP UNCOVERED* Shocking Facts About the Media's Favorite Church-Bashing Group]
Clohessy has really gone off the deep end and it will only get worse until he is sued personally.
Snap's real agenda is to make victims look like vigalanties. Snap is there to fulfill P's insane analysis. Snap should be representing victims' needs not playing cop. Many victims might say publishing priests addresses and phone numbers is only to prevent furthed victims being created. But I believe people are innocent till found guilty and SNA,.fulfilling their real conterintelligence mission, have ALWAYS, ALWAYS made victims look bad. Because like it or not SNAP's the ONLY "face of victims" anyone will ever see.
So here we go again another boundry transgressed in victims names by SNAP. All for the church's benefit. Show me where SNAP's done ANYTHING for victims benefit. They never do they act like they do and are for victims, but really this is all they do: Pose and smear or blur. Posture and f*&k up. For the last year plus I've been telling you this. It's happened again. No demo's around Francis the Humble creating his own investigation while refusing to address the UNITED NATIONS. No. SNAP thinks the more important issue is to violate other peoples rights. I'm just marking SNAP's path through the media's labyrinth. I'm just here to tell you they're doing it again. To both you and victims; but for the church and NOBODY else.
It seems to reflect yet another effort to Keep The Ball Rolling. Perhaps somebody will read the names, then consult the Bishop-Accountability site with all its nifty materials so handy for constructing a story with a few useful details, and then head back to SNAP for the “support” of some helpful tortie’s phone number or contact-information.
But I agree also that there seems to be more to it. Readers may recall the Santa Cruz case of a year or so ago: a long-ago allegant, already remunerated, deliberately searched-out the now-elderly priest living in a retirement facility, gained access by telling a lie that he was a relative, and then attacked the old man when he came down to the visitor-room. The outcome of that case was that the jury – in a venue as politically significant as Philadelphia is – did not deny that a deliberate A&B took place, and on an elderly person, but simply refused to convict regardless of the evidence.
It was a dodgy case to begin-with, and at its end the jurors did not wish to discuss it but – as some might recall – a local attorney tried to paper-over all of the problems by concocting an explanation for the verdict that exonerated the local judge, the local prosecutor, the local police, the local jurors, the ‘victim’ who was actually the perpetrator of the assault – and blamed it all on the actual victim in the case, the elderly priest whom the perpetrator had sought out after decades. And in yet another similarity to what we have more recently seen in Philadelphia with the Billy-Doe case, the entire matter was transacted in a Congressional District deeply entwined with the national Democratic Congressional leadership (seated just north in San Francisco) and the actual Congressman for the District also a ranking member of the Democratic Congressional leadership.
TMR did an article (June 22, 2012) entitled “Is SNAP advocating violence against elderly accused priests?”.
I suppose that, lacking any fresh allegations and cases sufficient to Keep The Ball Rolling, then tossing some chum out onto the waters would be the necessary thing to do. When you’re running a business where you promise shark-sightings, and none any longer appear, then what else to do but drum up whatever chum you can and put it out there on the waters? And hope you’ll get something to keep the spectators coming.
Revolting
Has anyone else here ever had need of a lawyer for a compensation problem? Yes? No? Sometimes you need a tort lawyer.For example, if a religion decides that it's not responsable for it's actions.
Your church has fought through many state supreme courts that it's not responsable for abuses enacted and or enabled by them and their employees, simply because they're a religion. Seriously, they attempted to fight with that ridiculous line, under the construct of separation of church and state. I only wish I was joking here.
If you are hit by a bishop drunkenly driving a car, this happened in Phoenix if I remember rightly, and he claims he can't be held responsable because he's a bishop and there's a seperation between church and state. You would laugh. But P here makes seeking an attorney some kind of wrong thing to do, if you've been raped as a child by a priest. Why? Because he believes SNAP is merely working for lawyers?
SNAP does work for "hand picked" lawyers. Lead lawyers hand picked by the church.
Just think of the control, being able to choose your oppositions' lead lawyer in their case against you. (Think Jeff Anderson)
At the same time SNAP's doing pr "events" ( done supposedly with the protection of the unharmed as an excuse, AGAIN) that make victims out to be vigalanties.
Please tell me. How does any of SNAP's behaviors help victims, those already injured?
What was the benefit to the victims' side in underlining "positively" one victims illegal and immoral battering of his elderly rapist?
I can understand anger; but violence? Never. I pity my abusors. I pity the victims, who have only SNAP as their "defender", more.
When you publish personal contact information like that, here is what is going to happen. The information becomes outdated and is no longer be accurate. For example, the priest in question will change his phone number. Then, some other poor sap will receive harassing phone calls, nasty letters, or worse. Think of the couple who was harassed because people were told falsely that they are George Zimmerman's parents. Then, SNAP will try to dodge responsibility for their actions.
" . . . . priests who have merely been accused of abuse."
Is there anything slight about being accused of sexual abuse? I suggest that the publishing of contact information by a relatively obscure and ineffective, go-between organization is the least of the accused priest's problems. Based on truth or untruth, any such accusation is serious and awful in its consequences immediately upon being made. Anyone "merely accused of abuse" is in a whole world of trouble, perhaps particularly so, if they are a priest. Priests are public figures and people can very easily reach them to deliver harassment, at least while they are around their parishes. Go into hiding, until you get cleared, like in the old days.
Also, in the old days people used to know how to take a beating without going to the cops. Fathers hit their children, husbands hit their wives, and adults hit their elderly parents to get or to keep them in line. These people took their beatings and did not complain. Probably made them better, tougher. You cannot break bones and hospitalize people, sure. But slapping them around or a few punitive punches is OK to straighten some one out. That CA priest was simply in a conflict that he was too old for. Too bad. But why go to court? He was OK. The jury knew that and acquitted. That reasoning and outcome is not new. In fact, the case is a throw back to the good old days. Actually, in the good old days, the old boy would not have complained in the first place. Man up, even if you are old. Stop running to the law every time there is trouble. These floppy useless babies are clogging up the judicial system. He hit me, wah!
Wow! "Take a beating"! WOW wow wow wow!
SORRY HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT SNAP; YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT A PARENT WHOSE ABUSERS CONTINUE TO GO UNREPORTED AFTER 42 YEARS OF MOLESTING AND BEING PROTECTED BY THE CHURCH (NOT CATHOLIC EITHER). I THANK GOD FOR SNAP!!
Ok… Ms Taylor, You again just yell in caps and your point is what? A Church (not Catholic)) has an abuser who for 42 years molested whoever and the Church (not Catholic) protected him and no one reported him.? We have seen you comment in the past about a gun to someones head and rape at an altar and I thought that you said priests. Is that episcopal priest. I am surprised that SNAP paid any attention.
Who is obviously not a parent? JR? He has had a bad experience with SNAP as a lot of victims have. (You say "PARENT WHOSE ABUSERS CONTINUE…". Do you mean that you are the parent of someone abused 42 years ago?
In any case, you have been asked to explain the situation in the past after you just rant-what is the point of your comments here? How has SNAP helped you-doesn't seem that they have by your comments.
I am surprised that SNAP pays any attention if you are not talking Catholic Church….
i spent a year in catholic high school, i saw qith my eyes, one priest beating the living hell out of 1 student, spent the next years in a seminary oh brother, one priest begged me to forgive him for his treatment of me i did he died 2 years ago, i am now 76, snap did not create this situation, by the way the other priests were ok though there was a lot of favorites
I am no SNAP fan but I am still up in the air about this move. I don't see any purpose printing home phone numbers or e-mail addresses when the space could be used to print phone numbers of the police department and the detective handling the case, but in the same breath I will ask was it o.k. for forums such as this to print information about Mr. Gallagher ? You can't scream foul when the shoe is on the other foot.
What was failed to be mentioned here is the example that TMR has posted is information that ANY individual would have received by picking up a phone and calling the archdiocese. The remaining information can be obtained by anyone with a computer and internet access and willing to pay $9.95. Other information can be obtained from court documents if they are not sealed. Its all public information. Scary but true.
Is it illegal ? NO
Mr. Gallagher made his information known all on his own. We'd know who he is if The Media Report never uttered a word about him.
What does Gallagher have to do with this?
And yes, it is all public record so if you know where to look you can find what you are looking for – DOB, address, aliases, etc….
When you file a lawsuit you go public. Simple as that.
No one printed his phone number or email address.
More transmissions from the sun-porch.
SNAP now is asserted (the 10th, 1133AM) to exist “to fulfill P’s insane analysis” – readers are welcome to get aboard the diagnosis-train and go to town if they think there are any sleazy-whackjobs in the vicinity.
What SNAP has done (as, in a marvelous irony, the Abuseniks on this site have also done and never fail to do and no doubt will continue to do) is a) to demonstrate how the Anderson Strategy Playbook works, and b) in so doing, to make the whole bunch of allegants look bad simply by exposing to the light the dynamics in which they have involved themselves. In other words, the Abuseniks are not ‘made’ to look bad; they are exposed for being involved in the seedy and plopulous (another variation) Stampede scam to begin-with.
And then again with the “victims’ needs” bit, although when he finally got around to opining in comments about just what those “needs” might be – about which “needs” he had been whining for quite a while – JR opined that he didn’t know and nobody knew. We face, in JR’s material, both a personal soap-opera and a personal alternative-world (see above about the diagnosis-train opportunities) and nothing more.
Then again with this bit about SNAP and “counterintelligence” (he was in the military we recall, as a passport clerk who couldn’t do reading-comprehension or spelling but apparently had the leisure to bone up on counter-intelligence – including how to reliably spell it correctly). No doubt there is a connection between SNAP and “counterintelligence” in some codebook hidden in the secret vault behind the screen behind his eyeballs, but if Abusenik stories are impossible to verify, imagine Abusenik secret codes hidden somewhere in their head-bones.
So then again: allegants are not being ‘made’ to look bad by SNAP and the Abuseniks we have seen her; rather, they are being exposed in that previously unexamined area of their actions wherein they got themselves in over their hubcaps with the torties and the front-organizations (SNAP being the most obvious, with B-A a close second) that were called-for in the Anderson strategic vision.
And collected on it. It occurs to me that we should think of examining this statistic: of the 11 thousand or so allegations actually made, how many were remunerated. Because it is a mug’s game to imagine that there are still un-reported myriads ‘out there’ who have not been in on the swag; there is no more proof of their existence than there is of Sasquatch.
And if JR imagines himself to be an alternative “face of victims”, well – I happen to think that he has indeed been just that, from the get-go, and the revelations we have gleaned from his performances have been hugely valuable and will no doubt continue to remain so.
The final paragraph of the1133AM comment can stay up where it was put. Readers are reminded to exercise caution when operating in the vicinity of Abuseniks’ exaggerated formatting.
And on the 10th at 1115AM JR will don the Wig of Reasonable Explanation and try to spin the allegant-tortie bit.
But of course, his opening bid already derails the game: we have no way at all of knowing if this “anyone” here has a legitimate and genuine “compensation problem” or whether some Abusenik ‘someone’ figured that the deal was too good to pass up i) near-zero threshold for evidence to support your story; ii) guaranteed chance of payout – quite possibly large (three or six billion divided among 11 thousand, more or less); iii) everybody willing to believe you presumptively; iv) added benny of coming off as a ‘hero’ for ‘coming forward’; v) zero chance of being prosecuted if you are somehow caught perjuring yourself; vi) all settlements will be made ‘secret’ by your attorney so that nobody can ever come back and check your story once the check is cashed.
I’d need to see some references to the Church saying “in many state supreme courts” that it’s not “responsable” – all I know of is the technical legal issue of whether the Vatican or a Diocese is the sue-able Party. But that may be too much thinking for this commenter.
And Anderson and that pandemonium of torties are “handpicked by the Church”? Tales from the Abusenik Sun-Porch indeed.
Divide and conquer.
I think it's good to have advocates out there policing and advocates out there tending to the damage of the survivors and advocates out there shouting to the world and the media about this horrible scourge. And they don't have to all be on the exact same page except that they're all trying to stop this manhandling of children. I myself stand alone as an advocate who wants our society to start going after the parents in addition to the perpetrators and enablers for criminal negligence. That riles people up all the time. I can't help that. I think the parents played a massive role in most of these cases by walking their children into this mess and then leaving them there to flounder. I want parents prosecuted in at least the most egregious cases of parental neglect.
Even though I'm not on anyone else's page or in anyone else's group, I'm still a good advocate for children abused by priests and I appreciate every other person in this army.
Indeed, divide and conquer.
Sarah, If we've been divided by anyone, it's been SNAP. Not the victims who reveal our real horror show with SNAP but with the simple fact that a 23+ year old organization with the exact same leadership for all those 23+ years, makes no sense in most of it's actions. No elections; no votes; no imput from below at all. Exactly like the very church that created it. SNAP makes absolutely no sense in any of it's behaviors. I repeat, this latest stunt is again another sleaze ball play to make victims look bad. Just like it gave support and publicity to the man in Oakland who beat up his perp. Believe me I get why he wanted to. Boy do I get why he wanted to but acting on it was wrong and illegal. But there was SNAP to underline the negative publicity that engendered. Why would victims want or choose or need to appear lawless publicly? Why publicl? We wouldn't and don't want that.
SNAP's like snitches in the Mc Carthy era. They just make you feel sleasoid they are so greasy. WhatSNAP's doing here is underlining "guilt without trial" and oh how well that political line fits like a hand in a glove with plopulent for brains political rational right here at this sight.
Oh yea SNAP's sure workin' for us victims. THE HELL THEY ARE!
A few that were not up when I submitted my prior comment.
‘Elderlypriestdefenseleague’ (the 10th, 1229) raises a valid point in the first paragraph, although I cannot completely agree with it. Yes, SNAP is only one organization, and in the larger scheme of national affairs is not a primary news site. But for the immediate specific issue of the Catholic Abuse Matter it still remains – along with Bishop-Accountability and the National Catholic Reporter sites – a significant site for persons interested in these things.
And, of course – and as ‘Elderly’ also infers – these are very difficult and dangerous times to be a priest; in a time of Stampede – adding my own bit here – there is almost no way to defend yourself. If I might update the list I provided in my immediately prior comment I would also add one more bit: vii) the definitions are not only fungible but downright malleable (as in Silly Putty) and you can consider a range of possible allegations or claims, from ‘being molested’ to ‘abuse’ to ‘attempted rape’ to ‘rape’ (with the added option here of ‘statutory rape’ or actual ‘rape’).
‘Elderly’ also makes a good point about priests being ‘public figures’. Although here I would wonder whether they actually qualify for the legal definition of that term, such that there is a reduced level of protection and expectation of privacy in matters concerning them (the bar for slandering or libeling a ‘public figure’ is higher than it is for a private citizen).
But I would like to see seminary-formation include this entire aspect in its preparation courses: priests are indeed ‘public figures’ of the Church (theologically as well as in terms of news and, perhaps, law) and must always be aware of that. And I would add that I would like to see seminary preparation also form them to think like other legally-responsible professional practitioners: there are ‘best practices’ that must be observed and there are responsibilities – upon priest and bishop – to ensure a certain quality of professional provision of ministry. And actually I don’t see the inclusion of these aspects as being merely an extra burden, but rather I see this aspect as being able to catalyze a more intense and acute and sustained focus on the quality of ministry – which, as I noted recently, is a key priority of the Pope in Evangelii Gaudium.
As for ‘Elderly’s advice to “go into hiding until you get cleared”, I’m not so sure that’s workable. First, while I agree that a low profile is certainly a good idea, yet in a time of Stampede an accused priest has only limited options (his own Bishop, for example, may or may have-to, put his name in some public list). Second, as we have often seen, anything less than the accused priest quickly hanging himself out for public response as if on Hawthorne’s village pillory will eagerly be construed by Abuseniks as some sort of effort at ‘cover-up’ or an attempt to evade or stymie the police (as empty and inaccurate as that characterization may be, when you think about it for a moment).
Third, these are not “the old days”; this is a time of Stampede. And also – far more widely than simply the Catholic Abuse arena – this is an era of Victimist law where the presumption of innocence has for all practical purposes been reversed to a presumption of guilt, once somebody gets to the microphone or camera first with a story of alleged abuse (anywhere along that wide definitional spectrum).
But then I must disagree with ‘Elderly’s take on that Santa Cruz case of mid-2012. Taking a larger view of the matter – to include legal precedents and their effect on such cases generally and on jurisprudential thinking and legislative thinking and also on public thinking or opinion – then I would say that that case set some very dangerous precedents and sent a rather dangerous message: you can go back later and beat up the person you accused and you won’t be convicted for that premeditated felonious attack, even if the evidence is all there.
In this regard I think a lot of public thought is shaped more by film and TV scripting than by serious thought about the actual legal precedents and consequences in the real world: whereas for the purposes of a script, the show can end with some sort of moral drawn by such an assault, yet in the real world there are consequences extending beyond the particular requirements of the scripting of this particular scenario. The trend toward precedent is that if you feel like it later on, you can not only achieve legal redress, but can actually also go back – even decades later – and physically assault whomever you had accused.
Nor was the elderly priest simply “in a conflict that he was too old for”; he was minding his business in a retirement facility and his attacker went to a the trouble – after decades – of finding his residence, going there, formulating and delivering a lie to gain access to the old man, and then consummating an A&B. This wasn’t a bar fight where two bozos were in a place where people frequently get tanked, and then he let himself get into a brawl he couldn’t handle.
(Imagine if this attacker – still in his 40s at the time of the perpetrated assault – had gone out and beaten up an elderly person. What jury, speaking for its community, would not be outraged? But the Stampede has so deranged public attitudes that so long as you were a ‘victim’ of this elderly person somehow, then it’s OK and understandable. That’s not a good dynamic to unleash.)
And while in a small sense there is a certain homey and rough-hewn guy-like acceptance of somebody getting a few whacks on the head to straighten somebody out, that hardly applies here where the old man, decades beyond the alleged abuse, was pursuing his lawful occasions in the privacy of his retirement home. And just what would be the ‘straightening-out’ that was going to be achieved here?
And legally, and surely no victimist would disagree, it’s not primarily about the amount of damage caused by an assault; it’s about the fact of the assault – and being assaulted – itself.
And if victimist thinking would now like to extend itself to claim that since the damage ‘lasts forever’ then the victim-y justification for physical assault also lasts forever, then let that be stated as a proposal and we can deal with it. If everybody claiming victimization by this or that had some conventionally (or legally) accepted right to go out at any subsequent point in the life of the alleged victim or the alleged perpetrator and personally take vengeance, then the entire modern Western concept of the legal system substituting formal judgments for personal physical retributive violence is undermined. (That’s how far back in “the good old days” this problem reaches – back to the days before courts of law, to the tribal or clan or personal vendetta. This, I must say, is not progress in any sense of the word.)
Ditto in regard to “stop running to the law every time there’s trouble”. And surely, such advice undermines the entire Abusenik agenda at its roots, does it not? And would ‘Elderly’ also address the quoted advice to allegants of abuse?
Lastly, in regard to ‘Elderly’s approach, it conflicts with the sense of Congress, which has come out strongly against ‘elder abuse’.
We then hear again from ‘Constance Taylor’ (the 10th, 1243PM) and enough said about that.
Then “Dennis” weighs in (the 10th, 131PM). As so often, his comparisons are not actually comparable. The priest was minding his business in his own home when attacked. The Billy-Doe/Gallagher case is hardly comparable: the allegant had participated in a criminal court trial (and is currently pursuing a civil case as well) where his story (well, stories plural) constituted a vital element in the prosecution’s case (which, of course, would if successful occasion a deployment of the Sovereign Coercive Authority against the accused). Thus the allegant had not only ‘gone public’ but was also actively involved in this very public event of the trial. So the story and the background of the story – to include such personal bits as may have relevant bearing on his credibility – were not only fairly publicized for consideration, but by the action of the allegant were literally thrust into the public forum.
Nor, of course, were Billy-Doe’s/Gallagher’s personal residence and contact information publicized. At the end of the day he could return to his residence without worrying about any general public knowledge of that residence.
But I do note that it has been one of the more fundamentally deranging bits in victimist law ‘reforms’ that the past history of the allegant/accuser can often not be formally examined in the legal forum any longer in many types of cases. And yet, especially in cases where there are so very often no witnesses and little – if any – corroborating evidence, then the credibility of the accuser becomes even more important if a court/jury is to assess the probability of the credibility of the accusation.
And here we see once again the brilliance of the Anderson Strategies (where, of course, Anderson did not single-handedly invent victimist law ‘reforms’, but rather marshaled all manner of then-recent developments (or derangements, I would say) in American law so as to support the creation and sustaining of the Stampede in the Catholic Abuse Matter.
So much, then, for the “shoe is on the other foot” bit.
Nor am I at all convinced that any individual anywhere can call a Chancery office and get the residence information of priests. (Although in the case of accused priests, there may be some truth to it, depending on the particular Diocese, and given whatever still-evolving policies are implemented by the Bishops nationally.) At any rate, of what use and on what justification would the residence information of any accused be usefully put up by anybody? If the accused winds up convicted, then his information would go up on a sex-offender registry; if he is merely accused, then what would be the justification such that it would theoretically override his right to privacy (and protection from vigilante type action such as we saw in the CA case)?
We have already seen the queasy demand for personal-information from commenters even on comments on this site. This is a dynamic that should never be allowed to become a generally-accepted practice.
Is it illegal? “Dennis” is accurate that it is not. However, it is very revealing: it reveals the mindset of the organization that puts the information up, and it offers a glimpse into the type of persons who read its site material – at least in the assessment of the organization itself.
I think that as The Ball Slows Down we shall see various Abusenik elements sufficiently desperate so as to try anything to Keep The Ball Rolling, even at the risk of revealing a dark underside that has always been there in the Abusenik universe.
Lastly, I would note that when sex-offense registries were first put in place 15 or so years ago, only the most dangerous (in the estimation of the State involved) had their residence information publicized. To find out the information of lesser levels or categories once had to go to the trouble of going to the local police station and asking (and even then, it has always been true that seeking that information for the purposes of committing a crime – assaulting the registered offender – was itself a crime). The intent was to provide a formal legal speed-bump that might give any tempted person a chance for second-thoughts about any possible assault.
But the development of technology and its commercial application has outpaced those legislative intentions to some extent. But only in the case of already registered (and thus already convicted) offenders. Those who are merely accused still enjoy some right to privacy, even if it is only the incidental privacy afforded by the fact that most people aren’t going to go to the trouble of acquiring the personal residence information. But the SNAP gambit here removes that informal speed-bump, and for what purposes – and with what consequences – remains to be discovered.
So this SNAP gambit is a) a legal act that yet b) can give rise without much stretching of the imagination to overtly illegal acts and c) for no good reason except to serve the purposes of the ever-increasingly desperate Abuseniks.
Jim, Dennis, Sarah, why are you diverting attention away from where pedophelia actually is?
We know exactly where it is. Your local neighborhood parish. school and organizations. We see it right here with sites like this and the Bill Donahues of the world who pick and choose to post only what they feel they should inform their readers.
You damn sure won't see reports like those that came out of the St. Paul area last week from that archdiocese stating that over half of all parishes in that area have a sexually abusive priest who resides at those parishes. That's 92 priests who have credible accusations against them. 92 or more potential victims.
I think information like that is a little more important to share then what an organization is posting about priests, information that can be found by anyone. Information TMR feels SNAP has put together only to incite harassment of these priests without one complaint filed. But for you since it is written here you believe it is written in stone and it is the truth.
WAKE UP
You and your church and this site are the pedophiles, you may not have never touched a child but the support you give to those sick individuals is no different. You create pain.
YOU PROUD OF THAT ?
Why are you yelling?
Well KenW, the catholic church seems one real good place to start to look for pedophiles.
And since Dennis and I were raped by catholic clerics, where better to shine some light? (The horrific light of our experiences.)
You have Dennis and I, both up front victims of your church's system of doing business and both of us (me totally. him partially who aren't thrilled with SNAP's behavior around this issue. i know of only 4 to 5 victims who have ever posted here and 2/3 of those disfavor SNAP.
Do you think that same percentage could be applied by participants in the civil rights movement to their leadership, Martin Luther King or Stokley Carmichael? No. they were voted for by the people they were asked to represent. But not SNAP oh no. They're just too perfect in the "work" they do so who needs back up from the majority of victims. Certainly not SNAP.
I have just come across the comment by ‘Sarah TX2’ (the 10th, 514PM).
I can’t quite make out the relevance of the “divide and conquer” here; unless it is meant i) not to apply as it generally does in the military or strategic sense (i.e. divide the enemy force and conquer each segment in sequence rather than attack the whole at once) but rather somehow is meant in the sense of ii) divide the tasks among the “army” and – so to speak – that many hands make light work.
I’m not sure I would characterize the Abuseniks as an “army”. Indeed, this thought brings us directly to a vital question: just how many persons are really actively involved in Keeping The Ball Rolling? While we can certainly peruse this and that website specifically or frequently discussing some element of the Catholic Abuse Matter and find many persons making comments, yet I don’t see that the sustained commenters number all that many.
But in the few occasions when SNAP, for example, has advertised conferences and gatherings, not many folks have shown up – as evidenced with stunning clarity a couple of January’s back when SNAP had its 10-year anniversary victory-lap world conference up in Boston to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Boston Globe’s kick-off of the sue-the-bishops Phase.
As with many other aspects of the Stampede, there remains the very real question of how many actual people are involved. Are we, perhaps, dealing with the internet version of a mirage? (This question, of course, is separate from, although related to, the question of how many genuine victims there actually are.)
Similarly, while I very much want to see the improvement in the Church’s pastoral ministry, I am not sure just how extensive “this horrible scourge” and all of “this manhandling of children” in the Catholic venue genuinely and actually is. As I have said before, we have stories and we have news reports on stories, and news reports on the news reports, and we have the legal achievements of the Anderson Strategies, but when you try to dive below the clouds and get a view of the actual terrain in this thing, there doesn’t seem to be any there there. Instead, there is simply an echo-chamber or hall of mirrors.
Readers may recall one of Spielberg’s early (and in my opinion under-rated) films, 1941 (released, if memory serves, in 1978 or so). The general in charge of the Los Angeles defense district, on a night shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, comes out to find that all the anti-aircraft batteries in and around LA are firing madly up into the darkness. What are you shooting at? – he asks an officer firing his pistol into the sky. We’re shooting at what they’re shooting at, is the reply. Although in the end there are no Japanese planes (unless, in the film’s eidesis, you want to accept the claim of “secret Jap airfields hidden in Pomona alfalfa fields”).
I get the same feeling when considering the Stampede. Lots of shooting, but nobody can quite produce a credible target when you start looking at things. (But, of course, the response to that is that so many gun crews firing into the night-sky can’t be all wrong, and where there’s all this gunfire then there must be a target out there somewhere.) A sad – to some people – variant of this is the death of Stonewall Jackson, fatally shot when out riding in the dark inspecting his lines with his staff, when a panicky Confederate picket mistook the sound of the staff’s horses for Yankee cavalry and started a general firing frenzy up and down the line.
So while the “advocates” – as numerous as they may or may not be – may not all be “on the same page”, my concern would go deeper and wonder just how actually extensive the ‘abuse’ (however defined) has been.
‘Sarah TX2’ is focused specifically on “children abused by priests” and that is her right. But I wonder if – in terms of the sexual or physical abuse of children – there are not more flagrant and actively dangerous venues needing the attention of “advocates”. Or perhaps some or many of the “advocates” are for some reason more focused on the ‘Catholic’ than on the ‘sexual abuse of children’. Hard to say, but that’s my thought.
Her thought about the role of parents, however, brings us right up to yet another odd aspect of this Stampede: so few parents went to the police. Was that because they feared the Church? Or didn’t want to somehow harm the Church? Or didn’t want to involve the police? But with few exceptions, as she notes, few parents chose to report to the police. Did they not think that what their children reported was something that required the police?
Or – an equally plausible possibility – did they receive no reports from their children in the first place? Until many years or decades later, in the time of the Stampede?
I support her urging for inquiry into this aspect of the Matter.
Dennis, your post on the 10th at 8:50 PM is riddled with gross errors. I will give you the opportunity to correct yourself.
~~
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THIS IS HOW EASY IT IS.
One shouts because one isn't being HEARD. Job well done Dennis.
Jim – what do you mean not being heard. It's a simple search on the Internet that Dennis has posted the results from. Again, he proves just how little his words say when entered as a comment.
You seem to be insane now, Dennis
Chatty Cathy (the longest poster in the world) can and should be skipped in this discussion. Nothing of any relevence appears there.IMHO.
Except for one little bit about how few people show at SNAP conferences. We don't show because their conferences are shit. Victims aren't stupid you know.
Example, to attend a SNAP conference you have to have lots of money. Flights; Transport; and Hotels COST. I figured at least $1000. How many working class people have $1000 dollars to toss away for a crap trade show, that's what it is, on one weekend? You tell me..
And when you go to a SNAP conference you are run ragged. No time to talk or think or organize with those who do showup. Also those who do show tend to have already swallowed the SNAP kool-aid. Very few victims have had any contact with SNAP period to make any analysis of it's true behavior.
Mr. Manos, I'm still waiting to know what freebies I am receiving.
Josie, I would keep my kid away from you .
I look at it this way. You don't like what I have to say or have said you are free to scroll right past my comments.and not read them. You won't hurt my feelings.
everytime all of us sin, from this time onwards, we abuse the mercy of God. Have mercy on us all, Lord !!!!!
Just like "he's" mercifull towards the 9,000,000 babies born every year who die before they are three? Or the quarter million drowned in the last big sunami? Oh but I forgot those dead on the whole weren't catholics. Never mind.
What are the names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of SNAP's leaders?
The Church wanted to move forward on female bishops, but bishops can only move diagonally. Gay priests can move wherever they want because they are queens.
Throwing acid is wrong, in some people's eyes.
~~Archbishop John Nienstedt to his priests indicated that 92 parishes had at least one accused priest assigned to it, or nearly half of the archdiocese's 188 parishes.
KenW,
This letter went out last Wednesday to the priests.
Do you think these headlines would make it to TMR for discussion ? How about parishioners when did they find out ? How many parents sent off their children to help at the rectory thinking the all clear siren sounded from abuse only to find out one or two and even ten years from now these children claim they have been abused.
This information is only coming out now because law enforcement is breathing down their neck. Otherwise catholics in that area would have been kept in the dark. How do you defend a group of people who would allow harm to come to a child after telling the world we will change.
Like I said before you can't make this stuff up.
Gross errors !!! Are you a comedian by trade ?
Yes, Dennis, gross errors. 33 priests over the span of 63 years, and most of them are long DEAD. Man up to your errors or rightfully be labelled a liar. As it sits, you are engaging in a tactic that leaves out key elements of the big picture in order to hyperbolize the scenario to fit your bias, as opposed to telling the truth. It's a disgusting tactic, and it does a HUGE disservice to the credibility of true victims. To you, fostering your own spite and hatred is more important than the truth, and that is the reason that I, a survivor of abuse, reject your account.
On the 10th at 927PM “Dennis” gives us – quite uncharacteristically – a long list of links. My first thought was that he was going to give us a bunch of those reports-about-reports which constitute the largest fraction of the Stampede’s virtual echo-chamber and hall-of-mirrors; the usefulness of which (at least, to any serious analysis) is doubtful indeed.
But he goes in a different direction here and provides a smorgasbord. There are general informational bits about Catholics and priests; there is something about “what happened to the Catholic Church after Vatican II” ( a true gem of a historical assessment, no doubt); there are Catholic directories on where to find the nearest parish and time of Mass; there are Catholic Directory entries that link to the general database of active priests (I’m not so sure about retired); there are links to Ask and to About – the general look-it-up sites; there is a Wiki link that is entitled “list of Catholic priests” but it is a very brief and seemingly random listing of less than a couple of hundred names ranging through space and time; and – but of course – Bishop-Accountability.
We are then given the characteristic (and always a give-away) exaggerated formatting insisting that “this is how easy it is”.
But as always with “Dennis” and his sidekick, their asserted certainties are actually your first indication that what they insist ain’t necessarily so.
But beyond the up-to-date accuracy of the lists, we have this problem: a general site – although on a rather remote topic – is not going to be something the average reader seeks out, unless – as is evidenced on the list “Dennis” gives us – they are looking for a priest they knew to officiate at their wedding or some such. But anybody going to a site like SNAP or B-A is not a casual viewer and is going there with more, and more specifically focused, interests and objectives. And since there are so many sites already available, and since “that’s how easy it is”, then what possible need is there for SNAP to put up its own list? The answer of course is that SNAP is not simply putting up another listing-opportunity for the general viewing audience; it is, rather, going for something else altogether.
Then on the 10th at 2050 “Dennis” shares more of his certainties: “we know exactly where it is” – but again, the Certainty Problem arises here. “Dennis” formally and actually has direct knowledge of very much of all this at all; he has immersed himself in the hall-of-mirrors and the echo-chamber, but he has actually witnessed little … nobody has, which is one of the key problems with the Abuse Matter to begin-with and one of the vital problems neatly side-stepped by the Anderson Strategies that glued the various parts of the Stampede machinery together.
What actual information and actual knowledge is there for this site to put-up? To repeat the Abusenik echo-chamber and join in the virtual Stampede? What this site is trying to do is to find out some actual and reliable information and formulate some intelligent conclusions based on actual knowledge – and everybody now has seen here how the Abuseniks respond to that project (like vampires to holy water). We don’t need to look further than their sound-bites and one-liners and assertive insistence that we only need to take their word for it because – with ludicrous and repellent chutzpah – they insist that they would never lie (the Wig of Goody Two Shoes).
Once again we are then given a “Dennis” newflash – unsupported by link or reference or nay identifying information – that last week there was a “report out of the St. Paul area” in which the Archdiocese itself has “stated” that over half of its parishes contain a sexually-abusive priest. And on the basis of a non-report by “Dennis” he swings into his usual vaudeville about one more potential victim for each of those priests. Why only one potential victim for each priest? Why not ten or a hundred? We’re already down the rabbit hole here so what’s holding him back? It’s a cartoon and anything can happen in a cartoon so why this uncharacteristic ‘self-limitation’ to just one?
So then, let’s see the link or identifying info for this “information” from “Dennis”, on the basis of which he then screams for us to “wake up” and asks us if we are “proud of that”. As always with Abusenik certainties, I need to see the “that” first.
The one dis-tuned tuning fork then sets off its twin. On the 10th at 1032PM JR weighs in by instructing ‘Sarah TX2’ that – waittttt forrrrr itttttttttttt! – SNAP is the one that has been dividing “we” (meaning, but of course, we victims that get no respeck here). He then actually does take a stab at analysis – although his idea of analysis is to recite a list of non-relevant facts: the age of the organization, the fact that it has had the same leadership throughout its 23-year existence; and that – as a “fact” – it “makes no sense in most of its actions”. Which is an accurate description, but not necessarily of SNAP.
The analysis barrels on: it has “no elections, no votes, no imput from below” (my bet: for reasons that may well seem clear to readers here, SNAP stopped listening to JR’s whackness and “imput” long ago and thus he ‘analyzed’ it as being an indubitable tool of the Church about ten minutes later).
And all this is “exactly like the very church that created it”. (Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to the other theory.)
Was there a “man in Oakland who beat up his perp”? As well as the one earlier mentioned in comments here in the Santa Cruz/Los Gatos area?
And how does any of this assortment of bits in any way demonstrate that SNAP is a tool of the Church? (Hint: the neat bit is that JR has constructed a cartoon where SNAP is both anti-victim and a tool of the Church, so he gets to hit the piñata from whatever of the two directions is most convenient at the moment.)
And again with the manly – so very manly – “The hell they are!”, although cattily screamed in caps. (Which will echo in his next comment (at 1051PM) referring to me in a female way; it is amazing how the most screamingly self-asserted manly-men here are the ones most predilected-to queasy gender snark).
And at 1051PM, nothing but a re-hash of the usual bits about “the catholic church” and “pedophiles” and the “Dennis”-being-‘raped’ bit (one begins to wonder if perhaps JR actually was on scene for that one but I’ll go with the fact that JR knows no more about the Rape of Dennis than he does about anything else).
And the now-obvious effort, once more again, to lubricate the slide of himself and “Dennis” into our attentions as genuine rape-victims of the Church. Readers are welcome to consider that invitation as they will.
And then – reaffirming my insight on a prior comment that we certainly needn’t expand the scope of JR’s ‘knowledge’ to national-events, he asserts that MLK and Stokley Carmichael [sic] were elected, “voted for by the people they were asked to represent”. They were?
Then (the 10th, 1104PM) he tries to explain away the low SNAP conference attendance by pointing out all the expenses that “working people” couldn’t afford. This presumes that a) only ‘working people’ are being ‘raped’ and b) there aren’t many such afflicted working-people (i.e. raped by the Church) in Massachusetts or the Boston are who thought it worth going to the Conference. So his explanation fails there. And he forgot to mention that SNAP probably wouldn’t give him his own throne on the speakers’ dais
Why is it when I or anyone else attempt to say what our experiences with SNAP have been, we are told we have it wrong by both SNAP supporters and SNAP critics? None of whom have ever worked "with" or for SNAP for any length of time. Kay Ebling and I worked 'for" SNAP for 5 and 6 years almost daily but you know so much more about SNAP than we do..
Our local dung thrower, excuse me, Mr. Plopulent (He created the word so he can have the title) assumes I wasn't given a "throne" at the two SNAP conferences I attended. How would he know?
How would he know that victims are just "running out" ,as it were, that the scandal is "winding down" and that's why SNAP conferences have fewer attendees? Your wrong per usual, sunshine.
Firstly, Since the vast majority of catholics in America (and the world are poor) presuming that any meaningful percentage of victims could afford a thousand dollar weekend that their opinion might be heard by SNAP, is simply stupid. Vast majority of catholics poor? That's right poor; even if they're working. That's the reality.
Have you ever attended a SNAP meeting, let alone a SNAP convention? I'll bet you haven't. Too long a drive from your ivory tower? Or maybe you can't drop $1000 dollars for a weekend? That you might be lectured by a former San Diego Padres Chicken mascot and non victim about how victims should "just get over it". "It" being our rapes. This happened at the first SNAP conference.
Secondly, If you look behind MLK and Stokley you will see their voters. Those people voted with their feet. They showed up. The same thing is true of SNAP. We activist victims have also voted with our feet. We walked away.
You need SNAP to behave badly. Why? Because it fuels your unrighteous anger.
Do victims need SNAP to behave badly; as consistently as they do?…..Why?
What's in it for us?
Qui bono, baby?
If you look at SNAP's history for it's life span you can see exactly how badly they've behaved. Not against you but against victims. The people they speak for.
[edited by moderator]
Here's an idea for anyone suffering abuse by telephone. Simply change your telephone number to a premium line and any idiot that call is charged a small fortune. The calls will soon stop and the victim of the abusive calls can make a donation to some charity.
Time Magazine today named Pope Francis their person of the year.
What else can one want who claims the media is against them.
Although I have heard only talk about his plans regarding clergy abuse, actions speak alot louder then words. Lets see what this commision does for victims.
We all agree now that Time Mag. is a bigot towards clergy abuse victims ? (Sounds funny but this is the way you people think)
I have gone and looked at material from St. Paul, MN that I could find (the links “Dennis” didn’t give us in his comment of the 10th, at 850PM).
First thing is to note that MN is – by amazing coincidence – the home state of the Jeff Anderson law offices.
MN is also the site of that matter involving the priest with the pornography, discussed recently in comments on this site. We recall that a priest a decade ago sold his hard-drive at a rummage sale; the new-owner reportedly discovered a cache of photos on it that may or may not have constituted child pornography; the police had investigated and found nothing rising to that level; then a Ms. Haselberger – very recently – left her job at the Archdiocese as some sort of overseer of sexual-abuse issues; then suddenly the police got interested again, because somehow they had come to the conclusion (or been informed by somebody in a position to claim to know) that there was indeed child-porn on that hard-drive a decade ago; then it was suddenly discovered that the original new-owner had made himself a complete (he says) copy of all that material a decade ago, but then had )he is reported to have said) totally forgotten that he had made it and stashed it somewhere in his garage or cellar (or perhaps on his own hard-drive); and the police were, at last report, looking over this new (and somewhat dubiously credible) cache made by the new-owner, which is purported to be a “complete” copy. Ms. Haselberger’s role in any of this is not-discussed by any media sources I have seen. The local police, meanwhile, also don’t want to talk about how they came to fresh wonder about the decade-old cache that they had previously cleared.
I have been able to locate only one recent Open Letter by the Archbishop (here: http://www.archspm.org/news-events/news-detail.php?intResourceID=10608
The Letter includes in its title only the name of one former priest, Clarence Vavra, now in his 70s and under supervision since 2008 and no longer allowed to practice ministry. There is nothing about the number of parishes or any similar material. (Apparently “Dennis” can indeed “make this stuff up”.)
I also reviewed news-reports from Fox News, Huffington, and the local MN CBS affiliate:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/05/st-paul-archdiocese-discloses-names-34-priests-credibly-accused-sexual-abuse/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/minnesota-archdiocese-priest-abuse_n_4393192.html
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/12/05/minn-archdiocese-to-reveal-accused-priests-names/
From those the following points are relevant: there were 34 priests named; all but one of the priests had been previously named, going back to 2004; all had already been removed from ministry (although there is a discrepancy among the reports, one claiming that 8 had not previously been named – but the same report also then states that 33 of the 34 had been named in 2004, so the math doesn’t work here); one of the priests died in 1965, now almost half a century ago.
Lastly – and I think most importantly – is the fact, mentioned in the Letter, that the “permission of the court” was required to release information. This may well be because by operation of state law the Archdiocese might be itself in violation if it released confidential information without the approval of a court.
So what we have here is the Archdiocese receiving the clearance from the court to publish information previously restricted by operation of law, and thus putting forward a list – with perhaps more information – that includes (with one exception) priests who had been named and removed from ministry almost a decade ago.
But to hear Jeff Anderson tell it (his sound-bites figure significantly in the various reports) what we have here is some sort of sudden revelation of a present-crisis that, were it not for his own heroic and marvelous and victorious efforts, would remain … published almost a decade ago.
Gross errors on the part of “Dennis”? Is he a comedian? Readers are welcome to make their own assessments.
A few further thoughts come to me.
If you own horses for racing, and your animal doesn’t do well, you have a couple of options: a) you can try to improve the critter so that it performs better; b) you can create a PR blitz about how wonderful your animal is; c) you can simply make fun of the other animals. All in the hope of influencing bettors. Of course that doesn’t quite cover the matter at issue in the Stampede: in a horse-race it’s all right out there for everybody to see and there’s photo equipment in the mix too; and by the same token the judges can’t be ‘reached’ or ‘influenced’ by a PR blitz because everybody can see for themselves how the critter actually performs on the track and whether it crosses the finish as the winner.
But in the Stampede, nobody really knows and nobody can see. Therefore options (b) and (c) stand a much better chance of ‘working’ for you, even if you are running a nag that can’t finish.
And what also comes to me is Thorstein Veblen’s analysis from a century ago of the dynamic that we would today call a Bubble: once power can create an illusion (in a mass society; and he was writing in an age that didn’t have the internet), then power can create the illusions necessary to sustain a Bubble, regardless of the fact (Veblen was assessing Big Finance) that what people believe about prices and productivity no longer bear any actual and real relation to the values of stocks and companies that participate in creating the Bubble of illusions. (If you are thinking that Veblen’s analysis here would pretty much cover this country’s Bubble problem of the past half-decade or so, you would not be wrong.)
Is the Stampede not also a Bubble? We have already seen how it seems to have little core basis in actuality and reality – compared to the extensive (illusory) claims of the Abuseniks. When you try to look at ‘the numbers’, then just as in Veblen’s day assessing the national economy, there is no there there. Everything melts away into that hall-of-mirrors and that echo-chamber I mentioned earlier on this thread.
And as Veblen observed of the Big Finance folks, their only solution to that is to keep pumping-up the illusions to keep the public excited about what in actuality is the Bubble.
Veblen also had a different take on Abraham Lincoln’s observation – in Veblen’s time only 50 or 60 years before – that “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”. Writing half-a-century later, in a far more urbanized mass society, Veblen observed drily that if all of the people are looking to be fooled, then politicians might easily achieve the same result of fooling all of the people all of the time. (He wrote that in 1924, and five years later came the Crash of ’29 and the (first) Great Depression.)
And I also came across this bit from a book review in the current edition of the literary review Bookforum (the Dec-Jan issue, p. 49), reviewing Eleanor Antin’s semi-whimsical memoir entitled Conversations with Stalin. The little girl in the book (ostensibly this is her memoir) says of her imagined conversation-mate: “I never told anybody but comrade Stalin and I were close friends. For years we used to meet up in Central Park and talk about stuff”. I get the same sense you might well be feeling now, when confronted with some of the historical and biographical assertions we encounter from time to time on this site. Having read that quote, would you conclude that this little girl actually did have a conversational relationship with Stalin?
Only a childlike (or childish) mind could imagine that it could make such a statement, and then be angered if the statement weren’t believed. But that is the dark illusory magic of the Wig: once you have put it on, then (if you are of a childlike or childish mind) you expect that people will instantly realize that you are all the things that the Wig might imply that you are.
I am also reminded of Dale Carnegie’s timeless advice to his readers back in 1915 when he was on a roll: fake it until you make it. (See the article on him in that same issue of Bookforum on page 52.) Which actually dovetails with Veblen, writing about the same time: the minions of Big Finance need only project their confidence and truthfulness and then people will want to believe them, and the Bubble will roll on, inflating as it goes. Until suddenly it doesn’t.
Dale Carnegie and his publishers also developed a neat ‘numbers’ trick: across the front cover of the book there would be a red-band with the following advisory: “This is Copy Number (fill in as many millions as you’d like here; the illustration uses “3,288, 873”) of the most popular work of non-fiction of our time”. (His actual name was ‘Carnagey’, but he changed it to make it seem like he was related to that other Carnegie, Andrew.)
So Bubbles and the people who, for their own advantage, create them are nothing new in this country.
As I think, now, we here on this site know.
Hey Dennis, and the M behind his picture gives him horns. There are 2 Time cover pictures of Frank one in red and one in white. Time magazine must have seen the horns. How could they let those out not once but twice. Wierd.
The photo is simply a photo of the pope in his natural habitat. The "layout" of said picture on the cover with the TIME logo behind his head is what caused the horns to "show" It's a bit like having a picture of jesus appear on a tortilla. Too strange!
To reiterate Don's question, what are the addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of SNAP's leaders? If TMR feels uncomfortable allowing them to appear on this forum (unlike SNAP, TMR has a sense of ethics and morality), perhaps somebody could provide an external link.
Any update on Daniel Gallagher's address and personal details would also be appreciated.
The privacy of honest people should be respected. Liars, fraudsters and extortionists deserve no such respect.
….and what would you do with that information ?
Here is mine. eckerdennis@ymail.com Knock yourself out.
You going to give your full name or are you going to be a coward behind a keyboard.
Pathetic, Dennis. I think that you are trying to encourage people to slander you. I wonder what you are up to, being the unstable character you are. Who in their right mind would ever email you?
Jim,
The camera never lies.
You do know now you started a firestorm. Everyone here now including Dave went out or is on line looking at that photo.
THANKS ALOT. It will become the subject of some blog someday saying the Pope's photo was desecrated on purpose.
Many, and perhaps most, of the priests (and others) accused of this evil have been proven innocent. Publishing the addresses of the accused is indeed incitement to violence. These matters should progress through the courts, where an individual is prosecuted, not classes of people.
Your first sentence is completely wrong, Mr. Hall.
But your last two sentences are completely correct. (save for your "classes of people")
No one here's out to get priests because they're priests. Show me where we made that indictment.
Oh God. I forgot when I posted my e-mail address that Josie would see it also.
A individual wants us to believe in one of his claims. With respect to him I will neither say I believe or not.
I will say there is an event that occurs called the Stockholm Syndrome.
If what he believes makes him comfortable I will leave it at that.
Happy Holidays my friend
Dennis, Stockholm Syndrome explicitly refers to one's empathy and positive feelings towards his captors. I am 45 years removed from my abuser and I have nothing to do with the group he was associated with, which is NOT Roman Catholic (it was Southern Baptist). So Stockholm Syndrome does not even remotely apply to myself. You passive aggresive tactic will not work here.
Yes, Dennis, GROSS errors that indicate that you are more interested in spite than you are in the truth. Correct them or rightfully be branded a liar.
And one more thing, Dennis: the veracity of my own claim is no less or no more than your own or Jim's.
Once again “Dennis” plays his games and spins his little webs.
On the 11th at 1226 he notes that Time has named the Pope their Person of the Year.
He tries to deploy this fact so as to refute the fact that that mainstream media are largely anti-Church in the Abuse Matter. We are to believe that since Time has named the Pope Person of the Year, then clearly the mainstream media is not anti-Church.
But as I have said in recent comments, it is primarily not the matter of the mainstream media being against the Church in general matters (although on many large but specific issues, the American media are not going to be happy with the Pope’s and the Church’s positions).
Rather, it is primarily a matter of the mainstream media being highly selective against the Church in the Catholic Abuse Matter. Indeed, and as the Anderson Strategies required, it is precisely the collusion of the mainstream media (for its own purposes) that has proven even more vital than the internet in amplifying, establishing, and sustaining the (illusion of) Catholic Abuse Matter and of starting and sustaining the Stampede.
So that is the way ‘we’ “people think”, and with good (and demonstrated) reason. Nor would I agree that “Dennis”’s own credibility as demonstrated in comments on this site does anything to ease the situation.
Then (the 11th, 318PM) “Dennis” inquires – wearing for this occasion the Wig of Goody Two Shoes – of ‘Mark Manos’ as to “what freebies I [Dennis] am receiving”. Of course, in the absurd situation into which “Dennis” has in a hissy fit now painted himself, he cannot acknowledge that I have put up quite a bit on that very point on this thread. Lah de dah. The point remains: as I said in prior comments on this thread, whether “Dennis” is receiving “freebies” depends completely on whether he filed, swore-to, and has accepted monies for, a false disability claim, as opposed to a genuine disability claim. Perhaps in the interests of transparency he would like to put up some documentation that would shed light on that key issue.
As for his catty little stab at ‘Josie’, it might have occurred to some readers to wonder whether his (putative) “kid” has more immediate problems than ‘Josie’.
From what I have seen on this site, I would imagine that is very very easy to step over the line and “hurt [“Dennis”’s] feelings”.
Then (the 11th, 758PM) we are informed that “a individual” [sic] “wants us to believe in one of his claims”. “Dennis” decides and declares that he will not tell us what he believes. Hardly impressive but fair enough.
But then “Dennis” – having avoided that pitfall he dug for himself – quickly drops in “the Stockholm Syndrome”. In other words, there is such a thing as a victim betraying his victimhood by seeking the consolation and status of identifying with his oppressors. Whether “Dennis” actually wishes to claim this about his interlocutor “Dennis” (in what strikes me as a rather unmanly thing for a manly man to do) also avoids saying outright.
But – there is no subtlety nor self-awareness in him – he still figures to recoup himself by wishing his interlocutor a “Happy Holidays”. I would advise his interlocutor not to accept such charming and hearty and manly bonhomie with his back turned.
Dennis, P's just trying to [upset you]. If he can get you furious by questioning your maleness and your family. He thinks you'll blow. Please don't.
P. don't talk about someone elses children. [edited by moderator]]
So, if Dennis were to be believed, a child is in danger of being raped if he walks into a Catholic Church, because according to him there are no safety measures in place, and also, if an individual does not agree with Dennis, he suffers from "Stockholm Syndrome." Dennis, I hope you realize you've annihilated any credibility you might have had here.
It has to be pointed out that all “Dennis” has given here is his email address. The priests are having far more info – including residence and phone – put up. I am not interested in having his contact information, but apples have to be compared to apples, not to shrunken kumquats. Nor – again and yet again and as we have so often seen on this site – does a ‘real name’ (or rather, a screen-name comprised of any conventional first name and any plausible last-name) seem to contribute anything at all to the quality of commenting material, which has to be judged on its own regardless of what moniker is attached to it.
Hey Ken if you were raped by a baptist, I'm very sorry. It's interesting you left one religion for mission central for pedophilia, the rcc, in response to your rape. Maybe you saw catholicism as being more truthful, religion wise, than being baptist. Fine your choice. That could explain your need to defend your new faith but why come out against your fellow victims? Those of us who were harmed in catholicism.
If you think SNAP is not playing decently here, I can only agree. But why not think about my analysis re. SNAP? It makes much more sense than SNAP's behaviors.
Jim,
[Publion] getting on my nerves or pushing my buttons ? Not even on his best day. For one I don't read his [posts]. Second, I don't think anyone else does either. [edited by moderator]
Not even close, Jim. My becoming Catholic had nothing to do with my prior abuse. I was not even looking for it. The Church found me.
What my own experience has done is give me a perspective on just how broad the problem outside of a Catholic Church. The first thing that I noticed when I first set foot in a Catholic Church 3 1/2 years ago was just how hard it is, near impossible, for a pedophile to function in a Catholic setting. Whereas in protestant and public school and scouting settings, they move about largely unhindered. That my abuser was Baptist has nothing to do with the fact that he was an abuser. The same with your abuser being a Catholic. Means nothing. He'd have abused Catholic or not. That's fact. The Abel Harlow Study is pretty much the benchmark as to what the demographic and personality traits of an abuser are, and the Roman collar is not even a blip on the radar for social workers who day in and day out separate pedophiles from children. What if your abuser was your Uncle Jimmy who never made more than minimum wage as a janitor and had nothing to sue for, and no notoriety to splash a big headline on a newsrag? Would you still be here voicing your indignation for your Uncle Jimmy and all other janitors? Probably not.
Dennis, you are not alone here.
KenW.
Sure the church found you.
You joined the church only 3 1/2 years ago after the crimes the catholic church clergy came to surface and would no longer be tolerated ?
If you have found your salvation within the catholic faith I applaud you. I never spoke negative about the faith but I do not agree with it. I cannot look down upon a homosexual and think he/she is any less a human being then I am and believe he/she can be fired from a job because the way someone lives their life. (see Philly newspapers Teacher gets fired after 12 years of service) I cannot agree that a woman should be forced to carry a fetus which is the product of a violent rape, and no one will tell me that I cannot show affection to my wife because someone thinks its a sin if I protect myself to prevent more children.
If you are a good catholic you would know these are only somethings you must believe.
However, you know nothing about the real catholic church. Just like I know nothing about Southern Baptists and how they handled your abuse. You may think the church is now pedophile proof but its not.Sure the church is going to be on its best behavior. Your statement that a priest would have abused outside the church is a maybe. Why would they have to When they had a pool of children to prey upon and when complaints were filed they were moved to another location and more fresh meat.
I don't want you to think I am trying to get you to leave your new faith. I only ask that you not treat it as a new toy on Christmas morning.
p.s. do you believe the catholic church should be involved fighting the change in SOL laws ?
Brand me what you wish. If you would take the time out and check my claims you will see that they are true.
But no, You would rather believe TMR and other individuals who leave comments.
You should be reading what Jim, I, Miss Taylor and other real victims and family members have been through dealing with the catholic church but instead you would like to call us liars.
I will not doubt any accusations to your abuse, I and Jim know what that is like. But I have read your previous comments on this blog and you have commented before not only to my abuse but to Mr. Robertsons (comment dated 11/27) and your defense to an organization or anyone who harms children I do find questionable, and being polite to you it can only be explained away with Stockholm Syndrome. Sympathy towards your kidnapper or ABUSER and I explained to you once and I will explain it again. If that is how you receive your comfort or peace so be it.
Gross errors – None
Happy Holidays
Dennis-I know that you are soooo busy with your inane comments that you don't read (or can't) Constance Taylor (don't think she is a "Miss" but a quite elderly mother who is having some difficulty expressing herself) has stated on here at least 2x that I have seen that the crazy abuser who raped whoever at some altar with a gun 42 years ago was not a Catholic. You constantly read wrong, misinterpret, and have a little trouble with the truth here.
Dennis, what you feel about my own situation means nothing to me. My disagreement with your rhetoric and your tactics is not an attack on yourself, it is my desire for the truth to be known. And the way in which you presented the Minnesota situation is far from the truth.
I have never shown symapthy towards an abuser.
Gross errors abound.
Julie,
Now on to you. Please tell me were I said anything about a child who walks into church they will be raped ? I know what I write. I am not like some individual who claims Jim and I are preparing for a retreat and forgets he even wrote those words.
…and when did I say there are no safety measures in place ?
…and when did I say those who do not agree with me have Stockholm Syndrome ? If that were true my wife has Stockholm Syndrome. She hates 90% of my ideas around the house.
Now what I did say pertaining to children helping out in the rectory and those parents believing the all clear siren sounded from abuse only to learn years later they were abused.
Do I think it is safe for a child to be left alone ever again with clergy ? No. But I believe that also pertains to coaches or anyone who deals with kids. If catholics walk away with anything from this travesty is to learn from their mistakes. If you don't it won't be you who gets hurt but your child.
Now Julie I think on your list to Santa you should ask for CREDIBILITY.
Happy Holidays
I agree! I feel sorry for my abuser also.
Boy, KenW's revelation of being abused by a Baptist and becoming Catholic has ruffled Jim's feathers!
Please tell us all why you think Jim is upset because KenW became a catholic. If anything I would say Jim maybe concerned for KenW.
I would be led to believe by your comment you think this is a game and because KenW has become a catholic you gained another point.
Its not a game ! The catholic church can never ever erase the long term damage they caused. Your clergy may have physically raped us but then your church who you defend raped us again.
The catholic church and its abusive clergy are now on the same page as Hitler, Manson and the rest of the animals. Your church has caused deaths not only of lives but also souls.
Would you defend any other murderer ?
Julie, I was abused by an individual that had a predisposition to abuse, and that individual just happened to attend a Baptist church. The Baptists have plenty of problems in that area, problems that are much more relevant to our time on this subject, but I in know way intended to typecast all Baptists as abusers. I do not go to any Baptist churches because I disagree with their theology, and their hatred for all things Catholic.
Julie I don't have feathers (not even a boa). thank you.
Ken W can worship a small Pekingese if he wants to. Me don't care.
"I would advise his interlocutor not to accept such charming and hearty and manly bonhomie with his back turned." Wow. That is some extra-polite third-party-style talkin', y'all!
Good advice, unless you are Dennis. Then, it is kind of a slam. How fortunate, though, for most of the people that this discussion forum comes with an advisor. Self-appointed advisors are usually the best. Kind of reminds me of a flight instructor that I once had. He dispensed much free and unsolicited advice. Smart guy, but totally deluded and mendacious. He never actually flew a plane! He read a book about it, I think. Oh, yea, that was an online course! So who knows who he was or what he really did. Zoooommmmm!
Well, what have we here?
On the 12th at 1059AM JR refers to “the rcc” as “mission central for pedophilia” – tossing old plop that is unsupported has already been discredited (dare I even ask if JR has reviewed the second Jay Report – funded in part by the DOJ?).
Being so well acquainted with what is “truthful”, JR will inquire of ‘Ken W’ why he (KW) will “come out against your fellow victims” – as if we actually knew that JR and “Dennis” are anybody’s “fellow victims” and were “harmed in catholicism”.
And he then – if he does say so himself – refer to his “analysis” of SNAP without irony. That would be the theory that SNAP – and Anderson and a further unseen host of as-yet-unidentified co-conspirators – are all tools of the Church.
As opposed, say, to the theory that not even SNAP could find room for JR’s whackness, whereupon JR suddenly analyzed SNAP (and so on) as being tools of the Church (why else, after all, would an organization be eager to show JR the door?). But as a vital element in the Anderson Stampede strategy, SNAP knew very well what it was doing in showing JR the door: he could give the whole Game away and demonstrate so very vividly the core sleaze and whackness at the core of the entire Stampede operation. As he has gone and done here. And thanks for that. SNAP’s loss was TMR’s gain.
But I strongly support his advice for all readers: “think about” his “analysis”. And proceed from there.
Then at 1104AM we are treated once again to that catty and histrionic just-entre-nous chat between “Dennis” and JR (not something one would expect from manly men). “Dennis” has already ‘blown’ here on several occasions, so the advice is rather late; that horse already got out of the barn.
And then JR debuts a Wig that not even I would have imagined: a Wig with a badge pinned onto it (do they still come at the bottom of cereal boxes?): I am not to “talk about someone else’s children”. Presuming such entities exist among these two, they were introduced here not by me but by the very persons who now don’t want to talk about it anymore. Of course.
Then “Dennis” (the 12th at 1139AM): just how are we supposed to establish the veracity of his “claims”? As if this were merely a matter of nobody wishing to “take time out and check” them. But this is the same gambit as we have seen in the Stampede, is it not?
And then the Wig of Righteous Self-Pitying Accusation: “But no. You would rather believe TMR and other individuals who leave comments”. Ovvvv coursssssse. And how – again – are we here to establish the veracity of his claims?
He then bunches himself, “Jim”, and “Miss Taylor” (how does he know that she is unmarried and why use that now-archaic “Miss”?) as “real victims” – to which I can only point out yet again that “Miss Taylor” made a claim that included her two sons (if memory serves), a priest or two, a gun, and an altar.
I am beginning to think that “Dennis” – and perhaps he is not alone – does not post comments that are actually intended to be seriously and actually involved in the ongoing discussions here, but simply material that at any given moment makes him feel better. Commenting as therapy, one might put it.
And for myself I will add that I have called nobody “liars” but have simply pointed out where dots don’t connect and where the probability of credibility is rather low.
Then “Jim” morphs into “Mr. Robertson” suddenly, and how “you” (unidentified in this comment) and “your defense to an organization” [sic] or “anyone who harms children” (where did anybody mount a defense of such persons here?) doth move “Dennis” to sniff that he finds it all rather “questionable” and can only conclude – the Wig of Sober and Informed Consideration – that it must absolutely be the result of “Stockholm Syndrome” (which term is apparently going to be the new replacement for ‘repressed memory’ here now).
But in making this observation, “Dennis” is actually trying to be “polite”. Lah de dah.
The screamy-y caps are once again there for all to see.
Then – as always – the concluding one-liner: “Gross errors – None”. Which apparently doesn’t extend to his claims about the reports that he claimed had come out of St. Paul, MN (discussed in prior comments on this thread) – but those prior assertions of his took place, as always, in some Abusenik ‘yesterday’ that is now “inoperative”.
Thus the valence of the final “Happy Holidays” is left to the reader to assess.
Then (the 12th, 1221PM) “Dennis” will turn his main battery on ‘Julie’. ‘Julie’ can certainly speak for herself and I don’t presume to do so here. But I have to ask yet again: what commenter on this site wrote that “Dennis” and “Jim” were “preparing for a retreat and forgets he even wrote those words” … ? Date-time stamp of the comment please? I had previously noted that I couldn’t find any such material in any comment on this thread or any other. (Neat scam though: since his hissy-fit has theoretically precluded his reading my material, “Dennis” need not even take notice of the question, let alone try to come up with an answer to it. Neato.)
And are we now to infer that “Dennis” did not just write at 1139AM (less than an hour before posting his 1221PM comment) that somebody’s approach “can only be explained away with Stockholm Syndrome”? [sic] Or in some grammar book that he wrote and has stored in the Shoebox behind his eyeballs, has he somehow defined the English language such that “can only be explained away” – further fortified by the claim that he is “only being polite” by using the Stockholm Syndrome explanation – somehow don’t necessarily involve him in having made the assertion … ? But with Abuseniks, not only is Time turned into silly-putty, but Language as well – in addition, I would say, to truth and veracity and accuracy.
So much for his immediately subsequent declaration that “I know what I write”.
We are then invited to imagine that he has a wife and are given a glimpse into that vision of his personal domesticity. Readers may make of it what they wish.
The sentence beginning “Now what did I say” does not make sense as written (which, again, with “Dennis” usually indicates that he has either lost his control of his thought or is somehow trying to write without saying something or anything at all about which he might be held to account). Being held to account for what one has said – or perhaps sworn-to – is not something that was supposed to happen in the Stampede. And thus, I have been saying, the Stampede marvelously attracted many types who perform best under the protection of that guarantee. And keep on performing.
He then announces that he doesn’t think children should be left alone with “anyone who deals with kids”. That’s an interesting scenario to imagine: how to structure a world where those who ‘deal with’ children are not to be left alone with the children, since “anyone who deals with children” must, logically, be untrustworthy to begin-with. Try to map that whole asserted vision out on a sheet of paper.
And we recall that in the Pre-School Satanic Ritual Day-Care Abuse Trials of thirty years ago, that point was neatly covered by accusing entire staffs of being in on the demonic plan to abuse children, dressed up as assorted monsters, in secret hidden tunnels and rooms constructed under the buildings. So the “anyone” extended not simply to individuals, but to entire staffs or faculties. We are down the rabbit-hole here, and have been for quite some time.
Then “catholics” are advised by the Wig of Advice that they should hopefully “learn from their mistakes”. The most interesting bit in that advice statement is the “If” – which leaves open space for the idea that Catholics have indeed learned some things, and that the reforms put in place are having no small palpable effect (as evidenced by the very steep drop in the number of allegations).
And then – the Abuseniks clearly haven’t read up on the definition of ‘projection’ … but they yet demonstrate it so very nicely and vividly – he advises ‘Julie’ to ask Santa for “credibility” [the histrionic scream-y formatting omitted].
And we are once again offered a chance to consider the valence of that “Happy Holidays”.
And the matinee concludes at 1241PM with another just-entre-nous chatty bit between the two manly men: going back, I imagine, to the JR photo apparently evident in some link from this site. (No, I haven’t gone looking for it nor have I looked at it – I know as much about JR from his material as I care to know.)
But notice the Wiggy histrionic and queasily self-aggrandizing characterization that “Dennis” – if he does say so himself – ascribes to Jim/James/Mr.Robertson: JR must “know now you started a firestorm” because “everyone here” has looked or is looking at that photo.
This is the level of mentality we are dealing with here: having your photo looked-at by strangers is some sort of success. Curious, because their material has been looked-at for quite some time at quite some depth, yet the Abuseniks are not particularly pleased with that attention at all. No, siree, not one bit.
More Wiggy scream-y caps. And then the Wig of Prophecy weighs in with a quickie to conclude the séance.
Oh my oh my oh my.
Oops, getting ready to put this comment up and I came across another “Dennis” bit from the 12th at 330PM, another catty just-entre-nous between the two manly men, which is now in the record.
Pushing buttons is not my purpose here; getting at some reliably sensible conclusions by examining material and offering my thoughts is all that I seek to do here. But to the Abuseniks, that’s already wayyy too much for them and – we may well imagine – was not supposed to be “how it works”.
I have already pointed out above the sly gambit about “Dennis” not-reading my material. And that’s OK with me. Since I am reading his, and that’s really all that matters for the purposes of getting a better insight into the Abusenik mind and the mentality behind (and underneath) the Stampede.
And I have come across two more.
On the 12th at 1043AM JR whines as if he had just come to the site for the first time and hasn’t been following the material at all: he just cawn’t think why he (“or anyone else” who attempts to discuss their “experiences of SNAP”) is “told” that he (or they) “have it wrong”.
Speaking for myself, I have not told JR he ‘has it’ “wrong”; I’ve simply pointed out that his theory (we recall: SNAP and Anderson and so on are merely tools of the Church or in cahoots with the Church and always have been) doesn’t really work as an explanatory hypothesis for numerous reasons that were explained at length (and which reasons he has never countered with anything but his own assertions).
Has JR – we are now suddenly informed for the first time – actually “worked ‘for’ SNAP for 5 and 6 years almost daily”? Readers are welcome to make of that new story what they will. I will say again: any theory that posits SNAP as a tool and creature of the Church has some serious conceptual problems as a hypothesis, and if somebody has worked for SNAP for a period of years and can make propose such a theory, then that says more about the proponent than it does about SNAP.
And is it possible that somebody can “know more about something” than JR does? Let’s leave that question for readers’ quiet personal contemplation.
Has JR been a featured speaker at SNAP conferences? Yet another new story suddenly given to us after all this time and discussion about SNAP (recalling a recent quotation I put up: “I never told anybody but comrade Stalin and I were close friends. For years we used to meet up in Central Park and talk about stuff”). But be that as it may: I will stick to my theory, since it can explain both SNAP and the ultimate outcome of the JR-SNAP relationship without much stretching of credibility and probability.
The number of allegants has dropped precipitously. If JR wishes to infer or imply unseen and undemonstrated myriads of yet-to-declare allegants, then he is welcome to own that inference and let the readership decide.
And as for the explanation of the low (I’m not even sure the number of attendees is “fewer”; but does JR wish to state that as something he might know?) attendance at SNAP conferences, we always have JR’s ‘working class’ explanation, which was handled in a prior recent comment on this thread.
And in regard to that SNAP world-wide anniversary conference of January 2012, I say again that it is difficult to imagine that within the Boston metro area there were less than a hundred ‘victims’ and/or supporters who thought it worthwhile even to make a day-trip (it’s not really a big state, Massachusetts, and I think it would take about two and half hours to drive along its east-west axis, and less than that to do the north-south axis; and I imagine that Boston would be the hub of the transportation network in those parts). And the photo of the Sunday morning concluding world-wide anniversary demonstration in front of the cathedral there shows hardly more than twenty or so folks, so not even many of the actual conference attendees thought it worthwhile to walk over (Boston isn’t really a geographically big city as American cities go, and certainly not a great distance between the conference site and the cathedral there; nor, for that matter, was the conference held – if memory serves from the local news reports – at a ritzy and expensive hotel).
So the factoid that “the vast majority of catholics in America (and the world are poor)” [sic] is unobjectionable – and may indeed be “the reality” – but it is hardly relevant to the point about the attendance at the conference.
And again with this apparent Wig of Working-Class that seems to be one of JR’s favorites from the Wig closet. (Which, neatly, enables this rather well-remunerated gentleperson to then infer that I live in “an ivory tower” – perhaps because I can spell, comprehend what I read, have some competence in several fields to which I refer, and actually know enough about “counterintelligence” to deploy its assessment techniques in the study of Abusenik material.
JR is welcome to “bet” all he wants.
The bit about “our rapes” – as if JR had just come to this site for the first time – is precisely what is at issue, in terms of credibility and even the probability of credibility.
We are then apparently to realize that when JR mentioned MLK and “Stokley” [sic, again] being somehow ‘elected’ what he really only meant was that their “voters” were those who “voted with their feet” – in other words, there really wasn’t an election and they weren’t actually elected to their roles. Oh.
Once again, language means something like silly-putty to the Abusenik mind. What, one can only imagine, did ‘rape’ mean in the allegations and the stories? But then, we already know that.
We don’t know how many of “we activist victims” actually left SNAP, beyond – if the story is to be credited – JR and perhaps ‘Kay Ebeling’. And that presumes the “victims” bit in the first place.
SNAP has behaved badly and it wasn’t because I or anybody else “need it to”. SNAP was needed to behave as it did because, in my hypothesis – supported by D’Antonio’s extended discussion in his book – it was the utterly-essential front-organization that could do the initial spade-work and ‘grooming’ of potential allegants that the (Church-chasing) torties were barred from doing on their own.
Those persons who went and availed themselves of SNAP’s services were – as I have said several times before – indeed pawns; yet not in some utterly incredible scam run by the Church but rather in the scam envisioned, planned, and carried-out by the Anderson Strategies.
As for the pronunciamento about “unrighteous anger”, I’ll let that stay right up where it was put.
And there is no Latin phrase Qui bono. Perhaps JR – unfamiliar as always with areas to which he pretends some knowledge – means Cui bono … ? That translates into: ‘to whom the benefit?’ or ‘who benefits?’. And as I have said before, allegants benefitted handsomely (eleven or twelve thousand divided by three billion – or, if you wish, “Dennis”s six or so billion; which is not chump-change, even if you subtract forty percent for attorney cuts and expenses).
And are there myriad more ‘victims’ than there were paid allegants? That is a question that has yet to be considered.
So that’s what was “in it for us” (referring to the allegants), I would say. And in JR’s case, it certainly seems to have worked out nicely enough from a cash point of view.
Has SNAP behaved badly toward persons coming to it with their claims? Well, if it was a tool of the Anderson Strategies then it did what it was supposed to. If JR means opening up a whole panoply of services to allegants, then SNAP did not do much of that – but then, if my hypothesis is correct, that wasn’t its purpose to begin-with.
But its bad behavior does absolutely nothing to establish its being a tool and creature of the Church. It simply goes to show that the Anderson Strategies – being a creature of the torties – were never concerned about wider services to allegants in the first place. One might even go so far as to wonder if the torties hadn’t already figured that beyond the cash there wasn’t much that their clients really desired. That’s “how it works” with torties, given the trade they’re in. And perhaps with their client-allegants as well.
Then a comment from ‘Jimmy Carr’ (the 12th, 355PM) who – we are intended to believe – was at some point in a flight school of some sort. And in that (necessarily accredited and government-certified) flight school ‘Jimmy’ had a “flight instructor” who “dispensed much free and unsolicited advice” (about flying and how to operate an aircraft – wasn’t that what ‘Jimmy’ had gone to the flight-school for?).
And yet – waittttt for ittttttttt! – this certified flight-school instructor “never actually flew a plane!”. Never? In his whole life? And he was a certified flight-instructor at a government-registered flight school? Has ‘Jimmy’ reported this to the FAA? Did he sue? Did he stay in flight-school once he realized that the instructor didn’t know how to fly a plane?
Ah, it was an “online-course”. So not actually a flight-school or an “instructor” at a flight school. Was the online course certified by the FAA? Was ‘Jimmy’ the victim of an online scam? What was the name of this organization?
But then ‘Jimmy’ sidles and slides toward what is apparently the point of this increasingly incredible ‘story’: this “instructor” had “read a book”. (Well, that’s certainly not something Abuseniks can generally be accused-of.)
Then – in a curiously familiar gambit – the zingy concluding bit: “So who knows who he was or what he really did”. Well, ‘Jimmy’ should surely be able to tell us. Or did he just let this online-course flight-school keep rolling on, to ensnare others and perhaps get them accredited to zoom up into the crowded skies at the control of a plane?
Or do so many dots not-connect here that we don’t really know if what we are reading is simply the result of medication wearing-off or some sort of ketchup-laced effort at humor?
Why would a person who wanted to fly not go to an actual certified flight-school? Why would a person who didn’t actually intend to learn how to fly take an online-course about how to fly?
Ummmmm – and then, in yet another very very familiar last-line zinger – we get “Zoooommmmm!”. Which – familiarly – is meant apparently to wrap up the act with a zingy one-liner.
Is it me, or do certain assorted commenters seem to have the same mentality as well as style, even though there are various screen-name monikers?
There are clearly more than a couple of rabbits down in the rabbit-hole, are there not?
And they are all, I would venture, on a first name basis with the Easter Bunny. Good for them.
P if you talk to Jimmy Carr, shouldn't you call him JC? Or is he a lesser member in the body of christ than you are? Oh that's right you forget to see jesus in everyone. Some catholic!
And jesus is the biggest easter bunny of all. He's up. He's down He's up again. Year after year just like every other seasonal god of every other made up religion.
Forgive me dear readers; I'm tired and a bit high. Mea culpa!
Josie,
What are you talking about ?
Are you on withdrawl because Miss Taylor, Jim or I won't go into detail about our abuse ?
Ok Dennis-We are aware that you do not read much. You only write so. I will try this again, then I really don't care what you understand.. Constance Taylor is/was not a victim. She has posted here a few times with pieces of a bizaare story.There is no sence to it and no point. She twice has said that the abuser did not have anything to do with the Catholic Church-priest or otherwise. I don't know what being "on withdrawl" is. Furthermore, I could care less about what you say regarding abuse. I don't believe you for a minute to be truthful.
Dennis, may I say what you wrote was so well said in your your post, today the 13th at 12.08 am . I am grateful to be here in part because you are here.
There it is folksy wolksies a little NONSEXUAL man love. Scarey enough for you? Will you live? I think so. What's your alternative?
O.K. Much to answer. KenW. I have never ever stated that it was the fact my abusors were catholic clerics that caused them to abuse. Never.
I think that the church systemically, aided; abetteted and enabled as a corporation, perpetrators. But never have I said that it was your religious beliefs ,your faith, that caused my or anyone elses rape.
As I have told you before, I post here because there is extreme denial here that anyone but priests have been injured.
I also post here to tell the truth about SNAP.
I'm very angry that a small segment of your hierarchy decided to create a counterintelligence unit, SNAP, to manipulate and injure victims more.
Don't you think we've been hurt enough by your corporate church's policies of helping the perpetrators and ignoring the raped?
And KenW, I am not particularly interested in how the church behaves towards children now. Not my job. I care about how they treat the people they've already harmed. The people they've done nothing to repair.
No matter how much SNAP has placed "protection of uninjured people" over those who WERE injured, out as a political line ( and limited the debate accordingly). I aint bought it.
~~I think that the church systemically, aided; abetteted and enabled as a corporation, perpetrators. But never have I said that it was your religious beliefs ,your faith, that caused my or anyone elses rape.
DITTO
Thank You James.
Its not the faith I have a problem with. I don't agree with it but that's my choice. I have a problem with the crooks and animals who claim to represent it.
I, personally, am a non believer in any religion.( that's why I refuse to capitalize their names and titles).
I think all but a very few religions are damaging to all their membership but particularly to the children. I think the kidnapping of morality and claiming it to only exist as morality because of religion is a base lie and truely evil. It eliminates our own human decency and says that basicly we are not decent (original sin) and that is one hideous lie. Those are my opinions as an individual and they have little to do with my being a victim.
Morality requires truth and the corporate church is still hiding the truth of how many have been injured and the consequences of those injuries, to us. We are your chickens come home to roost.
How often has the fact that because the abusors represented a religion, they were given by the authorities, special excemption from responsability for their behaviors. This has happened over and over again.
Dennis, I'll answer your question with a question: Do you think revisions in SOL laws should apply only to the Catholic Church? If your answer is "no", then the Church has very good reason to fight the revisions. The revisions are aimed SOLELY at the Catholic Church.
Jim, I strongly disagree with your statement at 10:56 AM. My great grandfather was a creep who died when I was 3, and your logic implies that I am responsible for his actions. That's complete hogwash. By the same token, I do not care how my bishop and my IRB responds to an allegation from 1960 where the accused has been dead for 20 years. I only care about how my bishop and my IRB responds to an allegation made today. And if that allegation is proven to be false, I expect the accusers and their professional "victim's advocates" to drop it, apologize, or get lost.
You may feel the catholic church has been singled out, and that is your opinion. The only thing I see here is the catholic church because of their actions or should I say inactions regarding clergy sexual abuse was the push society needed to demand a change.
If Penn State treated Sanduskys victims the same way the catholic church has we would be reading somewhere some alumni claiming the change in the sol was an attack on the school.
Laws and changes in laws all have a beginning or reason. It so happens this time around the changes needed is because of the inactions of the catholic church.
Your religion says all mankind is to be held responsable for what two nudists ate at the dawn of mankind. So don't feel superior here. That's 7 Billion people being held responsable by god for the actions of 2!
Any institution that supports rapists and ignores and or silences those raped, OWES big time. ANY institution religious or not.
Would I or Dennis have been allowed anywhere near where we were raped as children if our families hadn't believed their church was a safe place to send their kids? The church engendered trust and obedience from victims and our families; they passed known, known TO THEM, perpetrators around with no warnings. No protection. They sure as hell need to be held responsable for that.
~~
A tennis coach at a Main Line Catholic girls school was arrested Friday on charges that he kissed a 15-year-old player and sent her inappropriate text messages over a period of months.
Charles Meredith, 52, coached tennis at Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, in Bryn Mawr, until he was fired after the investigation began in October, school officials said.
YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP.
How many is this now within a few months ?
I guess this guy was abscent the day when kaput's instructional classes were being held on proper behavior between an archdiocese employee and children.
KenW, if you have kids in the archdiocese school system Karate classes maybe I good idea.
One of my children had abuse attempted on him in a Tae Kwon Do academy by his instructor.
One of my other children had abuse attemtped on her in a Baptist Sunday school room by an older teenage boy, and the pastor and one of the elders and the boy ganged up on her and accused her on the spot of making it up.
Dennis, your myopic tunnel vision is VERY disturbing, even offensive, to me.
And this has what to do with this article you are commenting on? Or is this your tactic to get people to acknowledge that you know how to read an article on the internet?
More useful and informative bits, whether they were intended to be or not.
On the 12th at 908PM, “Dennis” demands of ‘Josie’: “What are you talking about?”. I have no idea what “on withdrawal” [correction supplied] means; the phrase, used with that preposition, isn’t one used often in medical terminology (perhaps ‘in withdrawal’ would be more apropos). But the term is usually used in discussing some form of addictive situation. So, beyond the odd phrasing, from what addictive situation would ‘Josie’ be ‘in withdrawal’? Or is this simply some uninformed attempt to toss an epithet to the effect that ‘Josie’ is or must somehow be ‘on drugs’?
“Miss Taylor” – if I recall – related a story of abuse that did not directly involve her (beyond, of course, all the before-noted oddities of her story, the specifics of which that she did share, and thereby raising far more questions than they answered).
“Jim” has related a bunch of details about his story, and ditto there.
And that simply leaves “Dennis” himself.
Then (the 13th, 1208AM), he proposes his thought that “Jim may be concerned for Ken W” [corrections supplied]. He is welcome to share that thought; readers can consider what they have gleaned about JR from his extensive record of material here and consider the possibility or probability of that thought being accurate.
But then but then: “Dennis” “would be led to believe” (nicely subjunctive, and doubly so) that it is ‘Ken W’ who doth “think this is a game” and that somehow ‘Ken W’ has “gained another point”. Readers are free to consider which commmenters here seem to approach the project on this site as being some sort of “game” and which commenters seem interested in nothing more than ‘scoring points’ rather than coming to grips with the material as it develops in the articles and the comments.
Then – breathlessly – we are informed that “It’s not a game!” [correction supplied]. I’ve been of that opinion – and have expressed it – more than once here. The work on this site is indeed serious; and a rather unserious approach to it does no justice at all in any way.
But then the game continues: the presumption that the Church “can never erase the long term damage they’ve caused”. But that is precisely the point at issue and has been for quite some time here: we really don’t know a) how many genuine victims of damage there are and b) we don’t know for certain just what such “damage” has been caused by the (still un-proven) (a).
Nor has the making of the legal claim-documents “secret” at the behest of the claimants and torties themselves done anything to help address those two problems of (a) and (b).
Thus whether “your clergy … have physically raped us” is also left hanging unsupported (yet again).
And then the sly effort to move quickly beyond these issues by claiming – in standard Playbook fashion – that in ‘defending’ the Church the (alleged) victims are simply being “raped … again”. Again, I recall the screams of the warrior ants in T.H. White’s Once and Future King: “They are attacking us by defending themselves!”.
And, while we’re on the subject, I note again that in simply trying to examine stories and allegations and claims commenters are somehow ‘defending the Church’. The Church can defend herself; I am interested in the fact that we seem to have a Stampede fueled-by and comprised-of stories and allegations and claims that clearly appear to have no basis in demonstrable fact. And I don’t like nor do I trust Stampedes, nor do I like being the object of manipulative efforts to stampede me.
And then and then: the Church is declared to be “on the same page as Hitler, Manson, and the rest of the animals” [italics mine]. Again with the stampede-y histrionic claims, and this time equating the Church to Hitler and Charles Manson.
Of course, the Manson bit is from the Playbook – based on the stampede-y and histrionic and un-demonstrated presumption that if one is ‘abused’ (however defined along that very broad spectrum) then one is ‘soul-murdered’ (the phrase I have come across in comments on other sites’ articles dealing with Catholic Abuse Matter). Murder is hardly a term that allows a metaphorical deployment here; nor are allegants ‘soul-dead’ since it is not actually possible to physically kill a soul. But it’s a stampede-y metaphor and we can hardly be surprised that it was incorporated into the Abusenik Playbook.
Thus then the rhetorical conclusion that we would not “defend any other murderer” also fails here.
But you can see how the Play unfolds: like building something with one’s toy blocks, a dubiously grounded structure is slapped together, which provides – to the unsuspecting eye and mind – the appearance of conclusive logic and demonstration, when actually it is nothing of the sort and is, rather, merely a childish mental slapdash construct specifically whomped-up on the playroom floor for the delight of the constructor and the dizzy delectation of the Abusenik audience.
JR then weighs in (the 13th, 1035AM) with an opening that implies a busy mind with a lot to competently deal with (“Much to answer.”). Does that implication work here? Let’s see.
He does “think” that the Church “systematically aided, abetted, and enabled – as a corporation – perpetrators” [corrections supplied]. And on what basis has he formulated this ‘thought’ – or does it simply remain – as stated in his comment here – an ungrounded assertion? And an assertion that, by all the extant material we have been able to examine on this site, faces some serious evidentiary problems.
The “rape” bit has often been discussed here in terms of its problems already, many times.
Then we are informed as to why JR does “post here”: i) “because there is extreme denial here that anyone but priests have been injured”. Could he put up some quotes that demonstrate such “extreme denial”? As far as I can see, it is not the priests but the allegations and stories that have been the focus of attention, and – as far as any extant material we have been able to examine here – it is those allegations and stories that do not seem to hold up to even modest analysis.
That conclusion hardly approaches anything legitimately characterizable as “extreme denial”. It may constitute a sustained refusal to accept undemonstrated and improbable claims, assertions, stories, and allegations – but such a refusal does not reach some sort of psychological denial of the possibility of harm having been caused. It simply recognizes the still-un-refuted reality that there has yet to appear substantial information that will support those undemonstrated and improbable claims, assertions, stories, and allegations.
And ii) JR posts here “to tell the truth about SNAP”. But that “truth” consists in nothing more than a theory that has numerous serious explanatory deficiencies, leading to a hardly invalid doubt as to its accuracy or even the probability of its accuracy. So it might be more accurate to say that JR is not looking for any “truth” but rather that he is pretty sure he already has it, and is irritated that few here seem to accept it (with all of its oft-repeated explanatory and demonstration problems).
And once again: given the accepted definition of “counterintelligence”(I would suggest this one: activities designed to prevent or thwart spying, intelligence-gathering, and sabotage by an enemy or other foreign entity), I can’t see how SNAP – no matter who or what created that organization – qualifies as a “counterintelligence unit”. Rather – and as D’Antonio revealed in his research and his book – it is and always has been a ‘front organization’ designed precisely to perform the spade-work and assembling and ‘grooming’ of potential litigants that the torties themselves were barred from performing, all of those necessary tasks being performed under the greatly duplicitous guise of being a victim-services and victim-advocacy operation.
But none of that – as I have said before – does anything to support the theory that SNAP (and the Anderson Strategies and perhaps even Anderson himself) were or are tools and creatures of the Church (tools and creatures which – if it is to be believed – cost their putative creator (the Church) billions of dollars in losses; this would be a Church plan – if it is to be believed – that has hardly qualified as a success for the Church).
Thus the bleat as to whether anybody here doth “think we’ve been hurt enough” also fails. As do, yet again, the “rape” bits.
Then (the 13th, 1110AM) JR now informs us that he is “not particularly interested in how the church behaves towards children now” [sic]. This – he intones in some mimicry of a serious man of affairs – is “not my job”. Instead, he’s concerned for the persons the Church “has already harmed”.
Yet we (JR included) precisely do not know a) how many genuinely hold that status; b) what harm has been caused to them; or c) what (beyond the cash payments) can be done for them or that they wish to be done for them (presuming their genuineness as noted in (a)). Instead we are simply to believe his assertion – bordering on the phantasmagoric – that there are myriads of such persons ‘out there’ somewhere.
But this neatly-constructed Play of JR’s reveals itself here: he can go on dining-out ad infinitum on the claim that he is somehow working-for these untold myriads (or those who made claims and have been remunerated – and don’t seem interested in anything further) who – being invisible if not also phantasmagorical – cannot interfere with his own fancies as to what he is putatively doing on their behalf. Which ‘doing’, it appears, consists of not much more than tossing stuff at the screen here and there on whatever sites will still accept his material and having catty conversations with like-minded others.
And the point about “the people they’ve done nothing to repair” has been dealt with on a number of previous occasions on this site: neither he nor anybody else knows i) what needs “repair” and ii) whether any of these invisible and possibly phantasmagorical persons actually want anything ‘repaired’.
Nor – again – would counsel for any Party to such a “repair” program recommend it, given the complexities. And certainly, the billions paid-out could legitimately be presumed to have provided more than enough funding for whatever “repair” these persons might seek.
Beyond that, there is no information – let alone evidence – that JR’s project (such as he conceives it) has any actual prospective client-population at all in the first place.
Then (the 13th, 1056AM) he shares his personal opinions on “religion” – which are his own to have and enough said about that.
It might be interesting to see a list of just what “very few religions” are not “damaging to all their membership but particularly the children”.
Who is “hiding the truth” as to “how many have been injured”? Surely after the almost-thirty years since bringing lawsuits against clergy became practicable, and the dozen (in a couple of weeks) years since the sue-the-Bishops-and-Insurers phase began, and the assorted ‘windows’ opened in Statutes of Limitations, in addition to the already user-friendly conditions established for allegants by the Stampede … surely after all that the persons theoretically best-informed as to their being harmed are the putative ‘victims’ themselves. And yet the allegations have dropped off steeply.
Nor will I accept at face-value the mantra specifically designed to plaster-over that uncongenial reality: that many haven’t yet found the ‘courage to come forward’. It’s a possibility, but highly improbable, given the ease of bringing unsupported allegations for the past couple of decades. It is equally if not more probable that there simply aren’t many left out there who can come up with an actionable allegation, despite the prospective financial enticements. And perhaps it is even possible that torties have taken counsel of their own ever-twitching whiskers and realize that the days when allegations and claims and stories will be merely accepted whole-hog at face-value are now drawing to a close – and thus that their own salad-days in the Stampede are also numbered.
But to merely insist and assert that there are scads of victims out there, and/or that the already-identified victims still want more of (something), and/or that there are numerous past victims who haven’t come forward … any or all of those surmises would need some serious grounding in demonstrable fact or validly-demonstrated conceptualization. And we have seen none of such grounding and conceptualizing here by the Abuseniks.
Nor is it at all clear that the Church would know more than anybody else. Have we seen anything in the released files (including the releases in Los Angeles or, so very recently, in Minnesota) that would indicate that there are more clearly-evidenced cases contained therein? We have not.
And who is this “we” who are asserted to constitute “chickens come home to roost”? For whom, really, does JR imagine he ‘speaks’? Here, we are right back to square one. But it may well be a consoling phantasm for some individuals, for whatever reasons and in whatever ways. But that possibility is something else altogether.
“How often” – to deploy JR’s rhetorical gambit here – have allegants been “given by the authorities special exemption from responsibility for their behaviors” [corrections supplied] merely because they claimed to be victims (yet with little evidence, less examination of the claims, and the subsequent placing out of reach of all relevant material they put forward that might be examined)?
And this – from everything we have been able to assess here – may well have “happened over and over again”.
Continuing with the recent material here:
On the 12th at 857PM, “Dennis” tries to make the case that ‘Ken W’s joining of the Church only 3.5 years ago or so is somehow not such a big thing since it took place “only after the crimes of the catholic church clergy came to surface and would no longer be tolerated” [sic]. It seems to me that if ‘Ken W’ came to the Church after all of the previous decades’ of highly-publicized Stampede, then that would indicate the strength – rather than deficiency – of his coming to the Church.
‘Ken W’ is then lectured that “you know nothing about the real catholic church”. Of course, with Abusenik commenters, “know” and “real” are words that must always be taken with the appropriate grains of salt, since there is that Abusenik language-problem. Certain professional offices and secure-facilities are well-populated with persons who are rather certain of what they “know” about what is “real”.
Beyond what “Dennis” may know through direct personal involvement about his own alleged personal abuse, what direct personal involvement gives rise to further sure and certain ‘knowledge’? As opposed to simply a selective familiarity with the various illusory effluvia that make up the daily-fare in the Stampede echo-chamber? And for us, we know even less about “Dennis”s alleged abuse issue and how the Church and the authorities allegedly handled it, since – as so often – we only have “Dennis” as a source.
I doubt any organization on the planet is “pedophile-proof” [corrections supplied], but then very few of the Catholic clergy abuse allegations involve the phenomenon clinically-defined as “pedophilia”. (Of course, this may be merely an instance of the Abusenik language-problem again, and “Dennis” perhaps means something else when he deploys this formal clinical term – and yet he was on some level a medical professional and if there is one thing about which he could legitimately be expected to “know”, it would be the proper deployment of medical-terminology. And perhaps this oddity was a factor in the Department’s willingness to see its relationship to him severed.)
When the Navy – after Pearl Harbor – ramped itself up with all sorts of new methods and strategies and vessels: was that a sign of a powerfully-renewed institution or was it simply the same old Navy now “on its best behavior” but not really anything any better than the “real” old Navy of the pre-World War 2 era?
‘Ken W’ – like every Catholic – is well-advised not to “treat [the Church and his faith] like a new toy on Christmas morning” and we can all take that advice to heart as it may apply. But using the Church like a toy-block in one’s block-building set, fiddled with according to one’s predilections on a playroom floor, is also not a very serious approach and is hardly to be recommended.
And the comment concludes with yet another teen-y diary “p.s.” bit: does ‘Ken W’ think the Church should be “involved in fighting the change in SOL laws?” [correction supplied] I will simply say – as I have said before after this topic was discussed at some length – that any American should be involved in that fight: the degradation of even legitimate evidence and accurate memory over time is utterly unavoidable; let alone the problems posed by dubious evidence (and stories and allegations and claims) and dubious memories, long after-the-fact. From what little we know of his own case, the alleged difficulties “Dennis” encountered from the Church and the authorities may well have been based in precisely these problems. (And would the weakening of the SOLs in some particular State open up a fresh path to the swag for “Dennis”, as it so nicely did for JR?)
Then on the 13th at 329PM “Dennis” reports on the tennis-coach at the Main Line girls’ day-school. I am happy to see the matter reported to the authorities; it happened over the course of the late summer and the police investigation was conducted last month (her parents and/or the student herself did not report it for a short while). The charge involves inappropriate kissing and various text-messages and is classified by the authorities as a misdemeanor charge – but the coach has been terminated at the school.
The report I read doesn’t indicate if the 51-year old coach was married or not. That would also be of interest since, of course, the possibilities of sexual-abuse by a parent – married though the parent may be – are rife. Readers may recall that almost 40 years ago, the heightened awareness for sex-abuse began with the feminist concern over incest, about which numerous books (of widely varying quality and use) were published back in the ‘70s. If allegations are falling off against priests, this might be a fresh area of endeavor for persons so inclined. You cannot, as I have said before, make this stuff up – “Dennis” says that too.
Then the otherwise content-less valentine from JR to “Dennis” on the 14th at 132AM. We “folksie wolksies” are then informed that what we are seeing is “a little non-sexual man love” [screamy-y caps omitted]. And “is that scarey enough for” us? [sic] Well, since I am asked, I would say that what is scary is that a putatively mature adult would fall in love merely on the basis of assorted internet exchanges (presuming, of course, that this is the extent of the contact – but then my analysis may not have all the relevant facts or may have made some inaccurate presumptions).
Shortly thereafter, at 143AM, I am asked if I shouldn’t be addressing ‘Jimmy Carr’ (recalled as being the odd-storied former flight-school student … or not) as “JC”. Of course, if ‘Jimmy Carr’ becomes a frequent commenter to whose material reference will frequently be made in comments, then I may well indeed come up with a short-hand term for that screen-name.
The clunky effort to then somehow connect this to my presumably considering ‘Jimmy Carr’ “a lesser member of the body of christ” nicely demonstrates a) the quality of logic and thinking deployed in the Abusenik universe and b) the basic operating level of JR’s own mentation. And that is what it is.
His theological eructations are also what they are and need not detain us.
But then – my my – our forgiveness is implored because the ever-busy JR is “tired” and also “a bit high”. This, apparently, is meant to be an excuse for the (I agree) poor quality of the material here. In which case, though, one may legitimately wonder if such a condition is not more frequent than we had previously thought to imagine.
Publion, when God's voice became clear to me that I was to be Catholic, my question back to him was 'But what about all of those pedophiles?!?!" His response was something along the lines of "Yeah, right, how well has that worked for you in the past?" ANd then relevant pieces of information started lighting up on my screen like lights on a CHristmas tree. My opinions were formed on this subject a good 2 years before I even knew who Pierre was. The Media Report simply confirmed what I already knew.
You know what's really funny here? P's sad attempts at wit. Simply pathetic.
"Swag"! "Swag"! Reparation and compensation are referrenced to be "swag"? What, did you get, hit on the head by a Pirate of the Caribbean ?
Smear your enemy. Smear their rational. Blur the truth of their (our) horror and do it by playing that 'great' old school yard bullies' game: call or infer them to be 'homos'.
This is what is being passed off as reasonable, intelligent, 'educated', responsible (thanks for the spelling correction) behavior on p's part? In what universe does this dreck pass for 'smart'?
Oh and by the way, I'm always "high". Bombed. Totaled. Wasted. Just a deralict, se moi. LOL!
Deny. Deny. Deny. Deny. Like a profligate husband caught with another woman in his bed.
KenW, Don't you see how systemic denial is universal?
Your daughter told you the truth. You know her not to be a liar; yet the perp and the power structure denied denied denied.
I accuse p of ranting on endlessly. Thereby forcing people who post here, to scroll endlessly that we may post. Boring! p has a mission to bore it seems. Good job. You've succeded.
~~The first thing that I noticed when I first set foot in a Catholic Church 3 1/2 years ago was just how hard it is, near impossible, for a pedophile to function in a Catholic setting.
KenW,
With the latest news coming out of Philadelphia that "near impossible" statement you made regarding a "catholic setting" can surely now be questioned.
The sad thing is to disprove comments like yours a child must endure pain either mind, soul or body .
Do you pay any attention to the timeframe of when the actual abuse happened, or do you just look at the date on the newspaper and assume it happened then? Really!!!!????
They mean nothing to me, Dennis. To me, they are grumpy middle aged men whose lives did not turn out the way they wanted them to, and they need someone to blame. My observation stands.
What's more, we, as a whole society, know more now than we did then about how to recognize the signs of abuse present in the abused! EVERYONE in any position of authority in any church or educational setting is trained as such. I DO NOT SEE THESE SIGNS IN ANY OF THE YOUTH IN ANY PARISH I HAVE GONE TO IN THE LAST 3 1/2 YEARS! Go ask a DFS agent how high on their list of priorities any person wearing a Roman collar is…..I dare you.
Dennis said,
"The sad thing is to disprove comments like yours a child must endure pain either mind, soul or body"
Goebbelistic preying upon emotions to serve your own agenda. That is why I do not trust or believe you.
On past comments by KenW he informed us he was a victim of abuse. On 12/14 he shares with us he has two children who have also had to experience the attempted abuse by another. Although he did not elaborate on the abuse his children had to deal with I will assume the worst.
I would take a guess your not behind prison walls writing your comments and commend you for having self restraint from taking justice into your own hands not only for possibly reliving your abuse with the attempted abuse of one child but the attempted abuse of a second child.
I hope your children suffered no trauma because of what they had to experience.
Ken, you made it a point to put it in your comment with your second child how they ganged up on her to make her out to be a liar. I would not think you would add that if it did not disturb you. However, you do here exactly what that gang did to your daughter. You have doubted my claims because some of my comments.
Then you state you join an organization whose one defense out of many against clergy abuse is to make the victims look like liars.
There is only a few differences between the gang who did not respect your daughter then and the lack of respect for clergy abuse victims now. The gangs name is the catholic church, there is more of them and some of the gang members can be called dad.
I have doubted your claims because your rhetoric is dishonest, denies due process to the accused, typecasts the whole based on an extremely small portion of the whole, presents 30 year old events as current events, misrepresents and dishonestly inflates the numbers, and, worst of all, the most disgusting of all, you take anyone that questions your tactic and calls it what it is and you brand them a "defender of pedophiles". You are the one who is defending pedophiles by diverting attention away from where they are, here and now.
We are now informed by “Dennis” (the 14th, 1050AM) that – when you get right down to it – “the only thing” that he sees about Catholic clergy sex abuse was that it constituted “the push society needed to demand a change”. Well then, since that “push” (however legitimately grounded or otherwise) has been achieved, what’s up with the still-focused concern on the Church?
The “change” in the “sol” [sic] is, as I have said before, a matter of great concern for any citizen in the country, because to achieve it requires (further) undermining vital principles of evidentiary integrity and ultimately the integrity and the legitimacy of the country’s legislative and judicial systems themselves. And the “change” is, as I have said before, more properly and specifically a ‘regression’. (And again the observation cannot be avoided: the derangement of the SOLs in, say, Pennsylvania, would certainly provide to “Dennis” the same window of opportunity it provided to JR.)
Then he takes a stab at legal theory: “laws and changes in laws all have a beginning and a reason”. That may work for a grade-school law-primer, but not in the grown-up and real world. Many laws and “changes” in laws are ill-advised and perhaps even dangerous to the polities whose legislatures pass them, regardless of the pretexts – rather than “reasons” – put forward by the proponents of such “changes”. (The German Enabling Law of 1933, legally passed by the Reichstag, is certainly one indubitable example.)
Nor has it been demonstrated that the “changes are needed” since – yet again – we have not established that the “inactions of the catholic church” are of such a nature and extent that such ‘need’ is conclusively demonstrated. And even if the Church’s “inactions” (actually, alleged cover-ups would constitute ‘actions’, rather than ‘inactions’) were demonstrated conclusively to be of such a nature and extent that ‘something had to be done’, yet the lifting of the SOLs is hardly an appropriate remedy since – in addition to the fundamental damage done to the legislative and judicial systems’ integrity – the ‘solution’ of lifting SOLs does nothing to reliably redress the problem since it becomes even more dubious as to how to justify a conviction in a decades-old case where there is almost no evidence. So even if the problem exists, the solution of weakening the SOL laws does nothing to solve it that would justify the fundamental damage it would inevitably cause.
One can only wonder if the ‘medicine’ that “Dennis” learned actually supported such an approach: we’re not sure what the problem is, but this sounds like a nifty thing to try in order to fix it. Yet another possible reason why his career in medical services was allowed to dissolve.
Then from JR (the 14th, 1103AM): the almost primitively-literal reading of Scripture not only reflects JR’s mentality, but also does not accurately reflect anything that “your religion says” about “all mankind”. (Again, one wonders: he claims to have been a high-performing student, except that his math and chemistry or science wasn’t so good, and yet his apparently extensive and deeply-rooted difficulties with language (presuming they are not merely a put-on here) don’t suggest success in subjects with words in them, and now we see that he clearly wasn’t paying all much that attention to whatever religion classes he might have had. (Or perhaps he is confusing Catholic scriptural exegesis for fundamentalist Protestant biblical literalism – but that raises even more questions along the same lines.)
And yet again with the “rapists” and “raped” bit, although few of the allegations alleged rape. (Although, as the rest of this second paragraph of his comment clearly reveals, such inaccuracies provide a nifty justification for collecting some cash for oneself.)
As for his question as posed in the third paragraph: we really haven’t – again and yet again – established anybody was “raped” (except perhaps in the ‘statutory sense’, which perhaps in a number of the cases would only have reached misdemeanor-level, contrary to the lurid Abusenik phantasms). And while it is possible – thinking here of some of the thoughts expressed by ‘Sarah TX2’ – that some parents were mistaken, it is also equally possible that upon hearing the story they themselves realized that nothing approach “rape” happened. This is the problem with the Stampede now: having achieved its major successes (as defined by the Anderson Strategies’ objectives) by side-stepping evidentiary problems, it left vast gaps that have become and are becoming more evident now that the dust kicked up by the Stampede is settling. Yet another reason to try to Keep The Ball Rolling and the Stampede going: to prevent the more sober re-evaluation phase from taking its natural course.
And JR himself might want to consider the approach of ‘Sarah TX2’: that the parents’ role, and why they didn’t report, also be examined more carefully. In fact, in the recent Philadelphia Main Line tennis coach incident, the parents apparently didn’t report immediately because they (or the daughter) didn’t want to adversely affect college-possibilities. And that is a motivation that the Stampede has not ever considered – one that has nothing to do with respect for the Church or any such ‘religious’ issue, but rather simply a calculation based on non-religious concerns.
Then on the 14th at 1112AM, it is difficult to tell – JR being JR – whether he actually means to say ‘Denny. Denny. Denny’ or whether he actually meant what he wrote as “Deny. Deny. Deny’” . But if the latter, then who is denying and what is being denied? As for the sexual scenario he puts forward, I can’t see the sense of it here.
Then “Dennis” again (the 14th, 231PM): Presuming that “the latest news coming out of Philadelphia” refers to the tennis-coach and not to the Philadelphia Billy-Doe trial, there is no “pedophilia” involved. The tennis-coach kissed a minor female, and sent via internet or made verbally some inappropriate comments – which are being charged as misdemeanors, as I said in prior comments. And the coach, for those alleged actions, has already been terminated – an action taken rather quickly after the police concluded their investigation last month. Or perhaps – yet again – this former medical-service professional is inappropriately deploying a formal clinical term.
And his last sentence/paragraph once again demonstrates the conflation of the public and the legal forums (as I discussed in recent comment): what anybody has to “endure” in the legal forum is the result of the fundamental principles of evidence upon which the modern Western legal system is based. There is simply no way of getting-around vital fundamental principles (such as the evidentiary principles and the principle of presumptive-innocence) without fundamentally deranging the system and regressing it back to more primitive practices and principles.
Nor is that profound problem resolved simply by using “children” as the baby-harp-seals by which the whole toxic process of derangement is emotionally presented as a ‘good idea’ or a ‘necessary move’ and a Stampede – however well-intentioned – is thus generated as if it were a sound solution.
If you want to resort to the legal forum, then there are vital and essential and un-dilutable principles that have to be adhered-to or else the entire legal system becomes deranged and weakened.
And as I have said before, it was precisely upon such a toxic conflation and confusion that the Anderson Strategies deliberately relied in order to foment the Stampede in the first place.
What we continue to see in Abusenik comments here is the demonstration of the Playbook’s subsequent requirement that the Stampede be protected precisely by continuing to run the same old scam of conflation and confusion, avoiding like the plague any discussion of these fundamental problems. Because it was precisely by coming up with such false and conflated and lethally manipulative ‘solutions’ to these very basic and real and intractable problems that the Stampede was slyly and shrewdly built from the get-go.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has permanently removed five parish priests from ministry over allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct, including one priest who had previously been investigated and returned to duty last year.
An archdiocesan review board had cleared the Rev. Michael A. Chapman in May 2012 of an abuse allegation involving a minor. But within months, a new accuser came forward with allegations dating back 30 years.
In a statement expected to be released in parishes across the region Sunday, the archdiocese said the board substantiated new abuse accusations against Chapman and deemed him "unsuitable for ministry."
"This information was provided to law enforcement and Father Chapman was placed back on administrative leave," the statement read. "At no time was he ever returned to active ministry."
As has been its practice, the archdiocese offered no details of the allegations against Chapman or the four other priests whose removals were announced to congregants who braved Saturday's snowstorm for evening Mass.
Ken Gavin, spokesman for the archdiocese, declined Saturday evening to comment on the decisions, pending an official announcement expected Sunday
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20131215_Five_priests_removed_from_ministry_amid_abuse_allegations__two_restored_to_duty.html#oSojg9PJFOTKMK3L.99
It's a bit hard to reply to KenW on the who's more like a Nazi here. The institutional church who enabled the real Nazis or Dennis, who helped save lives as a fire fighter. Sure Dennis and I coud be lying. We aren't; but we could be no doubt. Here's the difference we were harmed and afterward our entire lives changed radically never to be the same. Always a lot more alone than others more suspect of everyone you meet than you were before it happened. A part of our own light our own spirit: left; gone. No longer understanding the world or capable of giving trust. A flinch mechinism against life itself. To be no longer connected but always out side looking at others enjoying their lives. We are watching them connecting; mating; and progressing with emotional and spititual support in their lives. Because we can not trust; others have a hard time trusting us and we are more alone than not even inside families.
So dont KenW dare to compare us to Nazi's. If we were really Nazi's your institutional church would more than likely fall all over itself to support us. Your faith is a long way away from the actions of your church in this kerfuffle. Stick to your faith and demand your hierarcy change. But don't go running around calling the injured, the oppressor. It's not true and It's not nice.