UNITED STATES
Salon
DONALD MCCARTHY
Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert begins his prison sentence on June 22. His crime? Payoffs he gave a former athlete he trained. He is not, however, going to prison for his alleged molestation of at least four boys, one of whom was the man he was paying off while he was a wrestling coach.
Thanks to statute of limitations laws, he can’t be charged for what prosecutors allege he did to his athletes decades ago. This is, sadly not an uncommon case; the statute of limitation laws regarding sexual assault in the U.S. are in dire need of repair. What is surprising — although it will soon become apparent that it shouldn’t be — is the amount of letters former Republican officials sent to the judge in Hastert’s case, imploring him to go easy when it comes to sentencing.
That prominent members of a political party would come out, sans hesitation, to urge the justice system to go easy on a child predator is gruesome. However, there is ample historical precedent. The rape and molestation of boys and young men in established institutions is rampant and goes uncommented upon more often than not.
The most famous current day example would be the institutionalized rape within the Catholic Church. Far from simply having a few “bad seeds,” the Catholic Church has long harbored pedophiles, protecting them from consequences. Thanks to the patriarchal nature of the church, it is extremely difficult for victims to come forward because they’re not speaking out about one priest but instead the entire church structure that backs the priest, a structure that has long held political power across the globe.
Even more convenient is the church’s positions on homosexuality and sex in general, which instill guilt in the young men who are molested by priests. One bishop, Robert Cunningham, even suggested during a deposition that the victims might have been encouraging the priests to go along with it, continuing the idea that the victims might be to blame. Despite calls for his resignation, Cunningham is still the bishop of Syracuse and has faced no repercussions for his words. It remains difficult to imagine Cunningham being able to adequately handle a case of sexual abuse in his diocese after these comments, but the church apparently disagrees.
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