UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
There’s an episode of To Catch a Predator, the reality show in which men try to have sex with underage boys and girls, and are then recorded in a confrontation with the show’s host who reveals that they’ve been caught on video and that the whole set up is a law enforcement sting – there’s an episode where a Jewish Rabbi “essentially tried to rape a 13-year-old boy” and is caught red handed.
Though clearly guilty, the rabbi blames the show’s host and pulls a “how dare you suggest such a terrible thing about me! I’m a religious leader!” pose. The rabbi’s attitude is exactly the sort of thing you see from people who not only abuse positions of power, but who feel entitled to positions of power. I’ve been dealing with it in the Catholic Church, sometimes on a personal level, for all of my 14 years as a Catholic.
In fact, a prominent bishop whose history shows a repeated tendency to lie in order to save face and whose record with regard to sexually abusive clergy is filled with shameful displays of half-truths and cowardice, and who’s particularly famous for protecting his favorites at all costs, pulls exactly this haughty “how dare you!” attitude when his lofty status is called into question. He even went so far recently as to claim he has a “stellar” record in handling cases of clerical abuse of minors – which he demonstrably doesn’t, and hasn’t for more than thirty years. But how dare we question it!
I mention all of this because I think it gets to the heart of why we allow abuse.
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