UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast
Before I wrote a book on Trump, I wrote one about the Catholic priest abuse scandals. And I see a heck of a lot of similarities.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO
10.14.16
Although they have never been recognized as a constituency, millions of American voters—men as well as women—have been sexually abused, and for them, the presidential campaign has become a riveting drama and a source of fresh pain. They recognize themselves in the women who have come forward to report gross encounters with Donald Trump, and they see in the much of the response to their charges a familiar kind of deflection and denial.
Before I published a current biography of Donald Trump called The Truth About Trump, I authored a history of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. This work required me to research the behaviors of sexual predators, to learn the lifelong effects of the wounds they inflict, and to understand the dynamics that prevent so many victims from coming forward to speak the truth for years, and even decades.
They stay silent out of shame, a false sense that they are responsible for what happened to them, and because they fear being ostracized, scorned, and worse if they speak up. (Catholic institutions have actually counter-sued victims who lose in court, demanding payment to cover legal costs.) Predatory men, and almost all the cases I studied involved men, understand the fears that keep people quiet and play on them to escape accountability.
Because sexual predators are generally compulsive and fixated on certain kinds of victims, they tend to repeat their aggression in the same manner. They may age, but the people they victimize are often roughly the same age. The need they seek to satisfy is so ingrained that they use the same methods every time. And if they are not caught, they continue to offend. One predator priest in Louisiana had hundreds of documented victims. …
So far the Trump scandal is playing out in a way consistent with what was seen in literally thousands of Catholic parishes around the world, where first one, then two, and then a torrent of complaints were lodged against specific priests. In no case did the mere volume, or the consistency of the stories, constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt. However, in all but a tiny percentage, victims have been found to be telling the truth, and the result has been settlements running into the billions of dollars and prison terms for more than a hundred priests.
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