Benedict XVI and Roman Polanski and clergy abuse

Benedict XVI and Roman Polanski have 3 things in common: fame, fortune and lots of famous supporters. Benedict XVI has the Opus Dei supporting him and his crime of cover-up of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army www.jp2army.blogspot.com and Roman Polanski has the Hollywood celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg supporting him in The View.

Roman Polanski and clergy sexual abuse

Andrew Hamilton October 02, 2009

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=16816

Roman PolanskiWhen I see media headlines about child abuse, my response is like that of a family I know, where one of the siblings is a publicly notorious criminal. When his crimes or even similar ones receive publicity, they feel humiliated. They accept the humiliation, as the price you pay even for indirect association with villainy, but they do not welcome it. That is how I, as a priest and so part of a group that has been identified with the abuse of children, react when there are more headlines about abuse: in weary resignation. If you do the crime, you — and those associated with you — do the time. I simply hope that the news item that reminds me of my humiliation might help someone, somewhere, who has been abused.

So it was in the last few days that I read of the reaction to Roman Polanski's detention and possible extradition to the United States to face an old charge of sexual abuse of a minor.

As the Polanski case was unfolding this week, Vatican United Nations Observer Archbishop Silvano Tomasi was reported to have claimed that few Catholic priests had abused children, that these were mainly gay, that there was as much abuse in other religious groups as there was among Catholics, that the vast majority of children were abused by relatives, and that there was as much abuse of children in other churches as by Catholic clergy.

Furthermore, he said, the Catholic Church had put its house in order. The implication was that the focus on child abuse in the Catholic Church was disproportionate and discriminatory.

Assuming the Vatican official was rightly reported (something not to be taken for granted), I believe he missed all the things that matter. The consistent spirit of anything we write about sexual abuse must surely be one of compassion for the human beings who are affected by it. Those who are abused, primarily, but then those who are wounded through their relationships with the victims of abuse: their family, friends, wives, husbands, children and — if our compassion stretches so far — the abusers, so often themselves once victims of abuse.

They are the people who matter, and what matters is that they are recognised and that others do not suffer as they did. This must be the focus of those who speak on behalf of groups among whom abuse has taken place.

The focus of Archbishop Tomasi's reported remarks was not on the human reality of abuse, nor on its direct and indirect victims. The comments seemed directed at saving the reputation of the Church as a public institution. And their spirit was less one of compassion than one of judgment. They asked who was to blame for abuse, both within the ranks of Catholic clergy and in the wider world.

It was an exercise in the transfer of blame, and one potentially damaging to priests who are homosexual. Certainly the remarks did not highlight what matters — the humanity of those affected, and compassion.

Nor are they likely to be effective. I doubt whether Catholics by their own words can redress the damage done to their reputation or establish that they have set their house in order. The only effective words will be spoken by those whose lives have been hurt by abuse. When they speak in gratitude and affection for the way in which they have been heard, compassionately received and healed by representative Catholics, their words will count.

All that said, the arguments made by Archbishop Tomasi are important, provided our focus remains on attending to the victims of abuse, and not on transferring blame.

To understand abuse and the experience of those who have been abused we must understand its extent and causes.

Tomasi's own account does not seem internally coherent. If he is right in claiming that abuse is common in many churches and religious groups, and most common in families, it seems highly unlikely that the sexual orientation of abusers is a determining factor. Abuse is likely to have more to do with abusive experience, sexual immaturity and with attitudes to power. But these are all opinions that call for methodical investigation.

His criticism of the focus on the Catholic Church also raises interesting questions. But the central question is not about how fair media coverage has been to the Catholic Church, but how helpful it is to those intimately and indirectly affected by abuse.

In my opinion the public reporting of abuse committed by religious officials has been necessary and helpful in changing attitudes to the abuse of children. I am less convinced, however, that the focus on monsters and punishment, and the repetitive treatment of abuse exposed and dealt with in the courts is helpful. It focuses on blame rather than on compassion, and hinders understanding.

In this respect the story of Polanski is telling. The case for his avoiding extradition has generally received a sympathetic hearing despite the seriousness of his admitted crime. The same sympathy is not generally shown to religious officials who have been tried for less serious acts committed just as many years ago.

I do not say this to complain about double standards, still less to argue that Polanski should be pardoned. What is significant in his case is that there is space to ask difficult questions about whether it is in the public interest to pursue and publicise crimes committed long ago. But the public conversation about sexual abuse in churches has been focused on blame and punishment and had been more resistant to inquiry.

The compassionate are often criticised for being out of touch with reality. In these questions, as elsewhere, they may actually be more in touch than their critics with what matters.


Andrew Hamilton is the consulting editor for Eureka Street. He also teaches at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne.

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Roman Polanski rape case: Child abuse activists call for boycott, quick extradition

http://www.examiner.com/x-264-Celebrity-News-Examiner~y2009m9d30-Roman-Polanski-rape-case-Child-abuse-activists-call-for-boycott-quick-extradition

Child-abuse activists are calling for the quick extradition of film director Roman Polanski so he can be held accountable for the rape he committed more than 30 years ago.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Joelle Castrix, a regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), held a press conference outside the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to show support for Polanski's extradition and to urge people to boycott movies and TV shows made by Polanski and those who back him, namely Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen.

Castrix said Polanksi is getting special treatment because of his position in the film industry:

Child molesters can be rich and famous, but they also need to be held accountable.”

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Victims group boycotting against Roman Polanski and supporters

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_13459434

Daily News Wire Services
Updated: 10/01/2009 08:29:29 AM PDT

Roman Polanski
The organization that champions victims of predatory priests staged a demonstration in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday and announced a boycott of the work of Roman Polanski and those who support his bid to avoid extradition to the United States.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, best known as SNAP, charged that entertainment industry figures speaking out for Polanski since his arrest in Switzerland Saturday are helping to enable the crimes of current child predators.

The 76-year-old Polish-French director was arrested by Swiss gendarmes at Zurich Airport as he flew in to attend the Zurich Film Festival, where he was to have received a lifetime achievement award.

The arrest came in response to a warrant issued by U.S. federal authorities at the request of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

In 1977, when Polanski was 44, he lured a 13-year-old girl to actor Jack Nicholson's home on Mulholland Drive, saying he wanted to take photographs of her for the French edition of Vogue. He gave her champagne and part of a Quaalude and forced her to have sex.

After he spent 42 days in a prison hospital ward for a mental evaluation, a deal was worked out for him to plead guilty and be sentenced to time served. Polanski pleaded guilty, but, fearing that a judge was going to reject the deal and send him to prison for 50 years, he fled the country.

U.S. authorities have 60 days to file a formal request for extradition with Swiss authorities.

Polanski's lawyers have vowed to oppose it.

Dozens in the film industry have called for Polanski's immediate release, including directors Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Woody Allen, Costa- Gavras, Pedro Almodovar, Fatih Akin, Walter Salles and Wong Kar Wai, actress Debra Winger and producer Harvey Weinstein, founder of Miramax Films and now head of The Weinstein Co.

"Since his arrest and the announcement that he will be extradited to the U.S., some entertainment figures have expressed sympathy for him," SNAP said in a statement.

"These public statements of support ... makes teenagers who are being victimized now feel intimidated and hopeless, thus staying silent and enabling their predators to keep hurting them and others."

SNAP said three or four victims of abuse by Catholic priests will take part in the demonstration, joined by relatives and other members of SNAP, which describes itself as a self-help organization.

Many of Polanski's backers, including French government ministers, have pointed to the suffering in his life, including his family's persecution by the Nazis and the slaying of his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and her fetus in the Manson Family murders.

"While sympathetic to Polanski's painful childhood and his wife's murder, SNAP feels that's irrelevant, as is his victim's personal decision to forgive him," the SNAP statement said.

"What matters most, SNAP feels, is that a child predator is kept away from kids and that criminals learn they can't simply hire smart lawyers, make themselves popular, flee the country and get off scot-free."

Polanski lawyers Tuesday filed papers with the Swiss Federal Criminal Court seeking his release, and the court said it would make a decision in the next few weeks. If it rules against him, he will have the option of asking Switzerland's highest court, the Federal Tribunal, to overturn the decision.

To date, the support for Polanski appears to have been more widespread in Europe than in the United States, where at least one entertainment industry figure has spoken out against him.

"Thirty years have not dimmed my memory of the crime for which this man was convicted," Paul Petersen, the former "Donna Reed Show" star and now president of A Minor Consideration, a nonprofit watchdog group for child performers, said in remarks published in the Daily News Tuesday.

"Hollywood may have forgiven Mr. Polanski," Peterson said. "I have not."

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French govt drops public support for Polanski

FRANCE
oneindia

London (ANI): The French government has withdrawn its support to film director Roman Polanski, who is currently held in Switzerland, after a campaign for his release was shunned by many leading European political and cultural figures. The foreign minister of France had asked the Swiss government to free the 76-year-old director, who was arrested in Zurich last Saturday, on a US arrest warrant for having unlawful sex with a teenaged girl in the late 1970s.

!France had made the appeal because Polanski holds a hold a duel citizenship of France and Poland. However, the French government has changed its stance now. "We have a judicial procedure under way, for a serious affair, the rape of a minor, on which the American and Swiss legal systems are doing their job," government spokesman Luc Chatel was quoted by the BBC, as saying.

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Roman Polanski and His Supporters No Better than OC Pedo-Priests and their Apologists

By Gustavo Arellano in Ex Cathedra
Thu., Oct. 1 2009 @ 8:17AM

I'm glad to see that prominent Catholic church sex-abuse victims advocate and Orange County resident/native Joelle Casteix is publicly criticizing the perverted director Roman Polanski and his apologists.They remind me of those ghouls, many Mater Dei High graduates, who offer every sort of excuse for an admitted rapist, who say forced sodomy was just a misunderstanding, who throw going-away parties for pedophiles, who prop up molesters with cushy jobs, who say the victim wanted it so that makes schtupping an underage teen okay, who give standing ovations to kiddie fiddlers. Wait a minute: did Polanski ever work for the Diocese of Orange?

Straight up, folks: fuck Roman Polanski. Fuck his supporters. May they get the karmic equivalent of what Polanski's character did to Jake Gittes in Chinatown Yeah, Chinatown! It was a cool movie, right? That makes everything okay!.

See trailer of Chinatown http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/ex-cathedra/roman-polanski-and-his-support/

Comment

Albino Luciani says:

First of all, I have to agree, as a MURDERED POPE, that the WAY to get at rape and sodomy supporters of Roman Polanski is hit them where it hurts, their pocket-book$.

Whoopi Goldberg, formerly welfare mom 'Carolyn Johnson', is a prime example of the double standard HOLLYWOOD TRASH crowd.

Just yesterday, 9/30/09, yet again, on The View, to grab ratings, Whoopi was saying Roman's child rape and assault, that he fully admitted to, was "different" than than of child rape and sodomy from others, like the 140,000 documented sexual assaults on kids in less than 30 years, just in the USA, Rog "Mahal" Mahony, Tod 'Gay Boy' Brown, and the USCCB (Unremoved Sexual Criminal Cabal Bishops), as well as Beppe 'Red Shoes' Ratzinger, Bill 'Darth' Leveda, Bernie Law (less), Christian 'Kiddie Porn' Schonborn, Noberto 'Kidnap & Kill Them At The Airport' Rivera, Claudio 'Lie With Statitics' Hummes, Tarscio 'Rump Ranger' Bertone, Ray 'Han'M High' Burke, etc., and the Roman "La Cosa Nostra" Pedo Curia have and continue to cause.

OK, Polanski, did not cause at least $4.5 BILLION in stolen laity offetory plate dollars, just in the USA, to cover up the curia caused crime sprees, thus far, that remain ongoing and unprosecuted, but let's call a SPADE A SPADE please (no racism intended Ms. Goldberg - funny you don't look Jewish?).

The common foundation is MONEY & POWER.

Want to hurt these 'holier than thou' criminals in Hollywood (Goldberg or Mahony), cut off their revenue (if not their heads, figuratively or literally).

www.bishop-accountability.org/abusetracker for other daily verified & vetted reporting on the pedo curia cult in the entertainment business (religious or useless celebriety unwashed tripe).

Just today, 10/1/09, at this above suggested empirical web site, is a most interesting article on the IOR (aka VATICAN BANK).

Do not be fooled loyal Naval Gazing Readership, this is about MONEY & POWER....your money for their power.

Cut off their money, or as St. Peter Damien correctly asserted: "STOP DONATING LAITY", and they FALL from power, back to the scum pool they emerged from in HELL.

There is no middle ground, you are either financially contributing to proven and documented global criminal degenerates, or you are not.

HOW WILL YOU ANSWER YOUR MAKER?!

Fiat Lux & Veritas!

Albino Luciani,
MURDERED POPE

Posted On: Thursday, Oct. 1 2009 @ 8:28AM

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish says:

I agree with Joelle Casteix and other spokespersons from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

There should be a total boycott of Roman Polanski films as well as a boycott of his apologists in the entertainment industry and anyone else who support him.

As far as Whoopi Goldberg is concerned, she has lost all credibility and is a disgrace with her comment that Polanski's actions "weren't rape-rape." She is sexist and does nothing much for her race either.

I wonder how Whoopi Goldberg would view Polanski and what she would be saying if the raped and sodomized young girl was a black child?

Boycott every single one of them.

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims' Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
Posted On: Thursday, Oct. 1 2009 @ 9:15AM

Albino Luciani says:

"sux2bu" (Short we suspect for 'SUCKS TO BE YOU') apparently, you are trying to chum the race card, when the issue REMAINS the criminal activity that goes unpunished of Hollywood degenerates, of all shapes, ages, sexes, creeds, races, colors, etc., as well as the Pedo Curia pretending to be the solution, when they are the PRIMARY CAUSE!

Over 15% of the Roman Catholic Clergy globally (documented) are/were child abusers domestically and globally (not the .5% to 1.5% touted by the pathologicall lying curia).

The pedo curia's racketeering, kidnapping, deliquenting, obstructing justice, embezzlements, endangering, defrauding, aid & abetting, enabling, extorting, murdering of hundreds of thousands of children, with no punishment to themselves, at laity cost in the tens of billions of documented dollars, domestically and globally, remains among the top crime sprees of the past millenia, right up there with The Inquisition, Nazi Genocide, Communist Purges, and other demonic acts against humanity, including the noise and visual pollution daily churned-out by the defenders of self admitted criminals like Roman Polanski.

Until heads roll, literaly or figuratively, like overtly guilty Mahony, Brom, Brown, Barnes, Leveda, Cummins, Steinbock, Ryan, Quinn, McGrath, Garcia, Curry, Rivera, Soto, Walsh, Blaire, etc., in California, Roman Catholic Pedo Curia Central, nothing will improve or change for the better.

Ergo, the laity are leaving in documented droves, parishes closing locally and nationally in massive record numbers, while revenues plummet...maybe this a a good coming from the incarnate unchecked EVIL?

Who need cross-dressing pedo demons in self-made buildings of Mammon, falsely representing The Almighty, when "God Is Everywhere", expect the long ago sold off souls, to The Devil, of the above names?!

As a MURDERED POPE, I would like to say I will pray for your soul 'sux2bu', but somehow I do not think it will help, I hope I am wrong on this last point.

Ciao,

Albino Luciani
Posted On: Thursday, Oct. 1 2009 @ 4:07PM

truths says:

The Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley has sent a message to all children and young adults that NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW! Thank you to team of investigators and prosecutors in Los Angeles.

Polanski has been arrested based on his plea of having sex with a minor child back in 1977. Imagine how many Catholic priests and employees of religious institutions also confessed to sexual misconduct with minor children, BUT, in the name of God and freedom of religion, these individuals will never have to face arrest and incarceration. Where are these sexual monsters today? Mexico, Switzerland, Italy, Thailand, Europe, France, Australia, South Africa, etc. etc.

One has to wonder if Cardinals Bernard Law and William Levada will ever face extradition to the United States based on failures to report crimes relating to sex abuse, conspiracy and RICO statutes. Extraditing employees of religious institutions to the United States would set a valuable and life-long precedent, but most important, our children could witness history in the making... that NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!!!!

Posted On: Thursday, Oct. 1 2009 @ 9:16AM