Mixed Reactions after Pope Benedict Says Pedophilia Illness, The Australian, September 17, 2010

Mixed Reactions after Pope Benedict Says Pedophilia "Illness"

The Australian
September 17, 2010

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/mixed-reactions-after-pope-benedict-says-pedophilia-illness/story-e6frg6so-1225925606769

The Pope greets Maria Tyszczak, from Poland, to the delight of a big crowd in Glasgow. Picture: AFP Source: The Australian

Pope Benedict XVI has used some of his strongest words yet to condemn abuse by pedophile priests in his church, during his historic visit to Britain.

But his description of pedophilia as an illness won a mixed reception from victims' groups and experts on sexual offenders.

Even before landing in Edinburgh, the Pope said the church had been "not sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently swift and decisive" in dealing with the crisis.

"I must say that these revelations were a shock for me, a great sadness," he said.

He said pedophiles must be "excluded from any possibility of access to young people, because we know this is an illness where free will does not work. We must protect these people against themselves."

The Pope normally refers to sex abuse as a sin or crime. Most victims and counsellors reject the concept of it being an illness, and prefer to call it a disorder.

Sue Cox, who was raped as a child by her local Catholic priest, said: "Pedophilia may be a disorder, but an illness it is not. An illness is something you can cure, something you can take a pill for."

Margaret Kennedy, who runs an organisation for adult survivors of abuse by priests, said: "He did not say that those who commit pedophilia can be priests no longer, or will be excommunicated. The state calls pedophilia a crime. We should call it a crime."

Keith Porteous Wood, of the National Secular Society, said: "The first question Pope Benedict should be asked is why his church continues flagrantly to breach the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child."

However, other experts who work with sex offenders welcomed the Pope's words. Donald Findlater, director of research at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity, said it was progress.

He managed one of Britain's only residential treatment centres for perpetrators of child sexual abuse for seven years.

"If it is an acknowledgement that (a pedophile) has an ongoing vulnerability to serious problem behaviour, that this individual could well manifest the illness in the future, I think that is progress.

"But the fact that it is an illness should not be used as an excuse to shelter individuals from the consequences of their behaviour . . . In my line of work, we rarely talk to sex offenders on the basis that they are ill.

"We say: 'You can control it, you can learn how to do that.' We help them develop the motivation to do that, just like with other addictive behaviour. But there is no pill or no quick cure."

Despite the controversy, tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Edinburgh and flocked to a mass in Glasgow to welcome the 83-year-old Pope.

Baby Maria Tyszczak, from Poland, was passed up to the Pope by a member of the crowd, and the pontiff wound down the window of his popemobile to kiss and bless the child, to huge cheers.