Prominent Catholic Priest Says Clergy Sex Abuse Victims Are Often the Seducers

Saints preserved! Did you hear about this prominent Catholic priest (Father Benedict Groeschel) who told the National Catholic Register that victims of sexual abuse by priests are in "a lot of cases ... the seducer"? While I'd like to think his comments are more nuanced than "priest blames children for being abused by other priests" -- you can decide when you read them below -- he seems to be missing the pivotal difference between an adult going to his/her priest and an inappropriate relationship blossoming and a child becoming an unwitting pawn to satisfy a priest's twisted desires. (The "poor" Jerry Sandusky bit should have been a red flag.) The story was removed and an apology was issued only after people protested. But Commonweal has the lowlights, some of which I am posting here:

Part of your work here at Trinity has been working with priests involved in abuse, no? 

A little bit, yes; but you know, in those cases, they have to leave. And some of them profoundly — profoundly — penitential, horrified. People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that’s not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer. 

Why would that be? 

Well, it’s not so hard to see — a kid looking for a father and didn’t have his own — and they won’t be planning to get into heavy-duty sex, but almost romantic, embracing, kissing, perhaps sleeping but not having intercourse or anything like that. It’s an understandable thing, and you know where you find it, among other clergy or important people; you look at teachers, attorneys, judges, social workers. Generally, if they get involved, it’s heterosexually, and if it’s a priest, he leaves and gets married — that’s the usual thing — and gets a dispensation. A lot of priests leave quickly, get civilly married and then apply for the dispensation, which takes about three years. But there are the relatively rare cases where a priest is involved in a homosexual way with a minor. I think the statistic I read recently in a secular psychology review was about 2%. Would that be true of other clergy? Would it be true of doctors, lawyers, coaches? Here’s this poor guy — [Penn State football coach Jerry] Sandusky — it went on for years. Interesting: Why didn’t anyone say anything? Apparently, a number of kids knew about it and didn’t break the ice. Well, you know, until recent years, people did not register in their minds that it was a crime. It was a moral failure, scandalous; but they didn’t think of it in terms of legal things. If you go back 10 or 15 years ago with different sexual difficulties — except for rape or violence — it was very rarely brought as a civil crime. Nobody thought of it that way. Sometimes statutory rape would be — but only if the girl pushed her case. Parents wouldn’t touch it. People backed off, for years, on sexual cases. I’m not sure why. I think perhaps part of the reason would be an embarrassment, that it brings the case out into the open, and the girl’s name is there, or people will figure out what’s there, or the youngster involved — you know, it’s not put in the paper, but everybody knows; they’re talking about it. At this point, (when) any priest, any clergyman, any social worker, any teacher, any responsible person in society would become involved in a single sexual act — not necessarily intercourse — they’re done. And I’m inclined to think, on their first offense, they should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime.

What do you think of his comments? Sounds like he could stand to watch "Deliver Us From Evil," Amy Berg's shocking documentary about clergy sex abuse, which showed the true damage this type of abuse does to its victims -- and the victims' families -- like nothing I've ever seen.

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