Ongoing religious scandals

Hotblack Desiato

Back to the usual unfortunately and the German EKD federation of Protestant churches turns out to be as bad as the RCC if not even worse:

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2024/01/26/german-protestant-churches-riddled-with-sexual-abuse-and-cover-ups-report-finds/

The €3 million research report found evidence of sexual abuse of minors – average age 11 and 65 per cent male – in all areas of church activity, from Sunday services to childcare and confirmation groups. The largest perpetrator group – 40 per cent – were pastors, of which almost all were male aged between 40 and 43. Of the perpetrators identified, more than two-thirds were married.

Researchers said the confirmed 2,225 abuse survivors and 1,259 alleged perpetrators in files they were allowed examine represented “the tip of the tip of the iceberg”. Extrapolating confirmed figures for the entire country, the researchers estimate about 9,300 survivors and 3,500 perpetrators in the postwar period. These estimates arose after researchers said all but one of the 20 EKD churches failed to co-operate with the researchers.

“A systemic analysis of personnel files was part of our research plan but we couldn’t implement this,” said Prof Harald Dressing, a forensic psychiatrist and research team member. While he cited “sluggish work of individual churches… and data of substandard quality”, the EKD, which earns €6.24 billion annually from Germany’s church tax system, cited personnel, time and other resource constraints for not presenting the files on time.

EKD members’ “homespun narrative of being the better church” meant many struggled – or refused to believe – that such abuse was even possible in their ranks. Decentralised structures compounded a “diffusion of responsibility” culture.

At the same time, an institutional “coercive harmony” saw many pastors and parishioners urge survivors to forgive their abusers – shunning them if they refused.

“They were construed as enemies of the church,” said Prof Martin Wazlawik, co-ordinator of the research.

€6.24billion a year... lucrative business religion.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-68313792

A South Korean pastor once hailed as a hero for smuggling out hundreds of North Koreans has been jailed for sexually abusing teenage defectors.

Chun Ki-won, 67, has been sentenced to five years for molesting minors at his boarding school in Seoul.

The pastor had been viewed as a saviour figure for decades with people calling him an "Asian Schindler" and his operations an "Underground Railroad" for those fleeing the North's regime.

He was arrested in Seoul in September.

Police accused him of molesting six North Korean teenagers, including defectors sleeping in the dormitories of the alternative school he had founded at his Durihana mission.

ohnonotgmail

Arrested in September and already sentenced. You have to admire the efficiency of their legal system.

Hotblack Desiato

Yet another "wholesome, Christian family" turns out to be a vile pit of abuse:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68353302

The big problem with homeschooling is that the crazier the parents, the more likely they are to want to do it. Keep kids trapped in a tight circle of home, church and school home again, and they end up with no-one they can turn to about abuse.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/jet-setting-preacher-had-brothers-collect-29000-in-social-welfare-while-he-was-abroad/a2067496813.html

A jet-setting church pastor who fraudulently claimed €29,000 in social welfare payments while based abroad says he shouldn’t be named after his court conviction as it is not good for his reputation.

Cristian Bona (53), who is a pastor at the Bisceria Shalom, an evangelical church in Drogheda, Co Louth, claimed €29,000 in social welfare payments which he was not entitled to while being absent from the State.

eire4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853459#Comment_121853459

and just like the church when caught red handed he is some how the victim.

Hotblack Desiato

Well it's religious persection, don't you know.

It's so hard to be a christian these days (because instead of the mythical being fed to lions, people might disagree with you on the internet and that's just not acceptable)

Hotblack Desiato

Here's a heartfelt NSFW message to all the abuse deniers, minimisers, and whatabouters who still live among us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymN1TRQtmas

ohnonotgmail

The irony of John Lennon describing someone else as a c* nt.

Hotblack Desiato

Takes one to know one I suppose

In other news, the Vatican has acted swiftly by its standards to defrock a 'notorious' Belgian bishop who admitted sexual abuse.

It took just 14 years after he 'quietly retired'.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/belgium-bishop-defrocked-14-years-after-admitting-abusing-108350011

Odhinn

And then there was this shower……………….

"Ann Marie Allen was 15 when she joined training course at an Opus
Dei-run catering school. By 16 she had become an 'assistant numerary'
within the organisation. During her years with Opus Dei, she worked from
early morning until late evening in places like the organisation's
students' residence in Galway, cooking and serving meals, doing laundry
and cleaning rooms.

While not working she lived in an Opus Dei centre. There, she says,
she was pressured to attend mass, deprive herself at meals, sleep on the
floor one night a week, and tie a ‘cilice’ - "a barbed wire with the
sharp bits on the inside" - around her leg for two hours daily.

She says she was isolated from her family, that her post was monitored, and her phone calls listened in to."

https://www.rte.ie/news/upfront/2024/0329/1440677-unveiling-opus-dei-irishwoman-from-ft-investigation-speaks-out/

Hotblack Desiato

I heard about those cults Ted… weirdos taking advantage of vulnerable people, cutting them off from whatever friend and family links they had left, and then exploiting them.

Now, will prosecutions follow? Child labour? Minimum wage? at the very least. And if not, why not?

Yet again it's left up to a foreign publication to uncover abuses here.

Odhinn

Dodgy pastor on the fiddle -

"A former pastor who engaged in theft and fraud to steal more than
€125,000 from his own Kildare-based church has been sentenced to
six-and-a-half years in prison.

Ebenezer Oduntan, a former pastor of the City of David Church in
Naas, Co Kildare, was convicted of 87 charges of a range of theft and
fraud offences following a three-week trial at Naas Circuit Criminal
Court last month."

"The judge said it was clear that Oduntan has sole responsibility for the
church's funds and bank accounts because he was held in such high
regard by its members."

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/0426/1445927-kildare-pastor-jailed/

Hotblack Desiato

E'zer not Goode.

He promised them eternal life.. in return for cold hard CASH CASH CASH CASH!!!!!

So no different from any of the rest of 'em, why's he behind bars again?

Sentencing Oduntan, Judge Martina Baxter said the accused had engaged in a "very prolonged, premeditated and well-planned scheme."

Some of 'em have been at it for close on 2000 years now

Odhinn

Anything attached to a statement like "Supporters of the changes say they will help to uphold religious values" is never going to end well

"Iraq's parliament has passed a bill criminalising same-sex relationships with jail terms of between 10 and 15 years.

Transgender people could also be sent to prison for between one and three years under the new law.

Supporters of the changes say they will help to uphold religious values in the country.

Rights groups say they are a further black mark on Iraq's record of violations against LGBT people. "

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68914551

Odhinn

Morality police my arse

"An Iranian teenager was sexually
assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran's security forces, a
leaked document understood to have been written by those forces says. "

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68840881

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/0501/1446801-crossan-court-latest/

A former priest will be sentenced next Wednesday for sexually assaulting and indecently assaulting a young boy in Co Donegal in the 1980s and 1990s.

Eamonn Crossan, 73, pleaded guilty to nine sample charges out of a total of 96 charges in relation to one victim, a boy who was aged between 10 and 15 at the time of the offences.

…

The court heard that the victim in this case went to gardaí after he heard that Crossan had been convicted of sexually abusing another boy in 2021.

In that case he was sentenced to three years in jail with the final 12 months suspended.

In relation to this:

The court was told that he was a regular visitor at the boy's home and that the boy first remembers something happening when he was about 10 and was sent to stay with the priest to look after him when the priest had the flu.

wtf were the parents thinking? Even back then, how could anybody consider that normal.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/05/16/religious-youth-leader-jailed-for-defilement-and-sexual-exploitation-of-girl/

A religious youth leader has been jailed for the defilement and sexual exploitation of a 16-year-old girl.

Law graduate Mark McMorrow (27) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the defilement of Sophia Doyle (19) on December 20th, 2020. He also pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation on dates between September and December 2020.

He further pleaded to communicating with a child for the purposes of exploitation on dates between April 10th, 2019, and December 20th, 2020.

Sinéad McMullan, prosecuting, told the court Ms Doyle wished to waive her right to anonymity to allow McMorrow to be named.

Det Garda Lisa McDonnell told the court that the Doyle and McMorrow families knew each other through a faith-based group called the Community of Nazareth. Her parents had joined when Ms Doyle was about seven or eight and the families became very close.

“Mark was in a position of power over me – not only with his age, but he was also in a position of pastoral and religious authority over me,” she said. “He knew I wasn’t able to say ‘no’ and took advantage of that. Mark was a man that I had deeply trusted – that the entire community had trusted.”

Hotblack Desiato

It's an absolute disgrace, all records should have been seized from the religious orders 20+ years ago at this stage

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/06/18/religious-orders-are-sharing-their-records-north-of-the-border-and-concealing-them-in-the-south/

The North is a political basket case and the South works better. Well, if you were incarcerated in or adopted from a mother and baby home or a Magdalene laundry, and you need the State to help you understand your personal history, this assumption gets it the wrong way around. Northern Ireland, even at its most dysfunctional, has managed to stop the records of these institutions from being destroyed, hidden or moved out of the country. The South hasn’t got around to it.

Most of the relevant religious orders in the North are now handing over their archives to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. We thus have the absurd situation that some religious orders are simultaneously
preserving and sharing their records north of the Border but concealing them in the South.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122273397#Comment_122273397

Non-paywalled: https://archive.ph/L0ICW

Just more despicable behaviour by the RCC in Ireland. No progress on the Tuam autopsies, either, while the skeletons decay. Delay/delay/delay

Hotblack Desiato

RTE documentary on Monday night about newly revealed allegations regarding Bishop Casey:

https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0721/1460965-bishop-eamonn-casey/

The former Bishop of Galway Eamonn Casey was formally removed from public ministry in 2007 by the Vatican, following "allegations" which, RTÉ has established, included his niece Patricia Donovan's complaint of child sexual abuse.

Hotblack Desiato

This is infuriating. They need "time and space to consider" blah blah but they knew all about these accusations long before he died, and still gave him the red carpet treatment. Sickening.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2024/07/27/time-and-space-needed-to-consider-interment-of-eamonn-casey-in-galway-catherdral-diocese-says/

The Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora has said that “time and
space” is needed “to consider and consult” on the interment of Eamonn
Casey in the crypt of Galway Cathedral following the emergence of
allegations of sexual abuse against the former Bishop.

…

A total of 11 bishops and 61 priests took part in the concelebrated
funeral mass for Casey in Galway’s Cathedral on March 16th, 2017.

His church equivalent of "full state honours" funeral and his exalted burial place are proof that the RCC simply do not care about the lives they have destroyed. They are laughing up their sleeves at us, we're even paying compensation for rape on their behalf.