UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
In the thread discussing Dennis Coday’s National Catholic Reporter article noting the sentencing of Father Shawn Ratigan for possession and production of child pornography–I discussed this thread yesterday–Colleen Baker responds to Becca Robinson’s surmisal that “no doubt” Ratigan took pictures of boys by stating,
No, they were females, some younger than two. One of the saddest aspects of this abuse crisis is the under reporting of attacks on girls. There was more speculation about this earlier in the crisis, and one reason given for the discrepancy was that the sexual violation of boys was considered far more egregious, so it was far more likely to eventually be reported. Of course this has it’s alternative assumption for girls–as in oh well, it’s to be expected to some extent. In any event, the girls as victims aspect of the crisis got totally buried by the ‘it’s a gay priest’ meme, since it was the easiest explanation for the discrepancy in victims.
In the meantime female victims were revictimized by being purposely ignored for the sake of the ‘gay priest’ meme, and many have still not come forward.*
As Colleen astutely suggests, the malicious intent of some Catholics like Becca Robinson and Purgatrix Ineptiae, aided and abetted by Father Joseph O’Leary (see the first link above for a discussion of this), to spin the abuse crisis as all about gay men molesting boys diverts attention from the fact that those abused by priests include girls. That’s what Ratigan’s case is all about–and this is what makes the attempt of the aforementioned folks to slip the meme of gay priests abusing boys into the discussion of the Ratigan story mind-boggling.
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