New Jersey Catholic Church spending big to keep abuse victims silent

This is commentary from political blogger and cartoonist Rob Tornoe.

Rev. Michael Fugee is a New Jersey priest who was put on trial for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy, and later confessed to fondling the child while he was under his care… twice.

Fugee was convicted, but that conviction was later overturned by an appeals court. Instead of a retrial, Fugee was allowed to sign a binding agreement not to work with or around children. Unsurprisingly, he was arrested last month after it was revealed he attended weekend youth retreats on behalf of St. Mary’s Parish in Colts Neck.

Now, there’s no indication Fugee engaged in this type of behavior this time around, but what if he did? And what if those victims, traumatized by shame and humiliation, weren’t able to muster the strength to come forward for many years?

Well, they’d be out of luck in New Jersey, and the Catholic Church is spending lots of money to keep it that way.

Currently, the statute of limitations for a victim of child-abuse in the state isn’t ten years or even five years. It’s two years. If abuse victims don’t come forward within two years of their 18th birthday, they’re out of luck, which puts us way out of step with neighboring states. In New York, victims have until they turn 23 to file suit. In Pennsylvania and Connecticut, they have until they’re 30. Delaware doesn’t even have a limit.

State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-19th) wants to do something about that. He is sponsoring legislation that would extend the window for statute of limitations for sexual abuse victims to 30 years.

“Protect the child molesters” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible that I know of, but the New Jersey Catholic Conference seems to be acting like it does, hiring the most expensive and powerful lobbying firm in Trenton, Princeton Public Affairs, to fight against Vitale’s bill

This isn’t a New Jersey-specific issue. The Catholic Church has been active in pushing back proposals that lengthen the time allowed for victims of alleged abuse to come forward. And in addition to New Jersey, high-priced lobbyists have been hired in Colorado and New York to fight similar attempts.

There position isn’t about protecting kids. It isn’t even as much about protecting priests anymore. It’s about money, pure and simple. Since the first instance of child abuse came to light, the Catholic Church has spent $2.5 billion on legal fees, settlements and prevention efforts related to sexual abuse.

We know that it’s not easy for some victims to come forward. Mike Crawford was only 13 when he said his priest fondled him. He wasn’t able to muster the strength to tell anyone until his early adulthood, which made it too late to prosecute. He now heads the New Jersey chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, and has been an outspoken advocate of extending the statute of limitations in New Jersey.

It seems to make common sense to anyone that doesn’t wear a frock and molest little kids. By extending the window for victims to come forward, we’d be allowing a judge, not a priest, to look at the evidence, review the relevant facts, and make a judgment as each individual case warrants it

“People deserve their day in court,” Crawford said, and I couldn’t agree more. After all, the Bible calls for the death penalty for child molesters, saying “it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.”

No one is calling for that. All we want is for victims to be heard. Is that too much to ask?

One papal video game is causing quite the controversy.

“Vatican Quest,” a video game created by RoundGames.com, has come under fire in Spain due to its take on the Pope’s activities, mainly acting as a pimp for pedophile cardinals.

MasLibres.org a self defined “social initiative in favor of religious freedom” has asked the game to be taken down from Spanish platform minijuegos.com, calling out the platform’s president, Oscar Moreno, according to non-profit organization HazteOir.org.

MasLibres’ spokesman, Miguel Vidal said “Reducing to caricature the drama of child sexual abuse, and then profiting from it, offends the victims and their families,” according to the Daily News.

“This trend of hurting the church and Catholics must have a limit. Unfortunately on some web pages that are currently hosting the game it has become the most popular with its readers,” concluded Vidal, according to El Huffington Post

The game was released in March. The player controls the Pope character, who looks a lot like Pope Benedict XVI, and helps him deliver young boys to Roman Catholic Cardinals, who then put their arms around the youngsters and disappear through doors with them. The Pope must not be caught by reporters and journalists with cameras or the game is over.

It’s not hard to see where the controversy is coming from.

Pope Benedict XVI’s reign was plagued with underage sexual abuse cases by priests. Yet the Pope was the first one to openly apologize and called for a zero-tolerance approach to the problem.

This is not the first time Round Games has released a game around a controversial theme, “Osama’s Revenge” and “North Kim Jong Nuke Trouble” are two of the company’s most memorable ones.

thegodlessatheist:

This one time at Sunday School. Listen to me I sound like I am going to give my ‘one time at band camp’ story. But anyway I was 12 or 13 at the time. For some reason the topic of self love was brought up. They did not use the term masturbation. I guess that felt all us guys would conduct a circle jerk session right there in front of everyone or something. I was told if you masturbate, aka conduct in self love, you will go blind. I wish I was witty, sarcastic and disliked authority like I do now back then because I would have shouted out, “It’s a miracle! Praise Jesus I can see!! Oh lawd I can see!!”

No surprise, really. Religious “teachers” like the ones at Sunday schools and CCD’s are not really trained and are not equipt to be teaching children or even to be responsible for children. Not only that, but they’re often ignorant and gullible people and frequently believe old wives tales like ‘masturbation will make you blind’ or ‘Jesus died for your sins.’ Finally, religions are almost entirely based on lying to people in order to control them, so it’s no surprise that the church would be threatened by the idea of a teenager finding a feeling of relief anywhere other than the church. If I was selling a story as flimsy as this Bible bullshit, I’d probably be pretty defensive about it too.

“I was just talking about Christianity in that - a thing like you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I’m only saying that I was talking about ‘pain will lead to pleasure’ in ‘Girl’ and that was sort of the Catholic Christian concept - be tortured and then it’ll be all right, which seems to be a bit true but not in their concept of it. But I didn’t believe in that, that you have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happens that you were.” — John Lennon