Details of Sex Abuse Allegations Should Not Be Used to Sell Ads

By Tony Webber
Dubbo Photo News
July 19, 2014

http://dubbophotonews.com.au/index.php/dpn/categories/opinion-analysis/item/3237-details-of-sex-abuse-allegations-should-not-be-used-to-sell-ads

The thoroughly appalling revelations of child sexual abuse seem endless.

The Rolf Harris case was world news, and followed on the heels of other high profile UK entertainment figures being prosecuted, all of which emerged from the revolting allegations against the late mega-celebrity, Jimmy Saville.

The torrent of information in Australia has resulted in a recent request for a two-year extension to the Royal commission into the institutional response to child sexual abuse.

Churches, non-government organisations, children’s homes, schools, charities – from the Salvation Army, through the Police Boys’ Clubs and now Swimming Australia – all have had their names ruined through association with the endemic abuse of children.

Of course none compare to the atrocious record of the Catholic Church in not only committing these crimes on a horrendous scale, but concealing them from not only the authorities but also the vulnerable young parishioners of the diocese to which the pious predator was relocated.

The Pope recently went as far as estimating that two per cent of the clergy worldwide are paedophiles, and I suppose it is unlikely he estimated on the upper end of the scale.

That is truly astonishing, yet it is a reflection of the degree to which Catholic priests have, to be brutally blunt, become synonymous with raping children, that the Pope’s announcement scarcely caused a ripple, even though it must amount to thousands of men who are authority figures with close proximity to children.