by Dreams End » Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:25 pm
dbd...not only is that a fair question...it's also quite interesting as I do a search for "priest" on counterpunch's site. I was basing my remarks on a couple of articles I read defending one priest or another...so I went searching. Here is an old article where they publish an article squarely on the side of abuse victims in 1998 or so:<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/sexabuse.html">www.counterpunch.org/sexabuse.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>And while there is a swipe at the idea of the dubious "recovered memories", it is clearly on the side of the victims.<br><br>The next article I found was from 2002. A tad more...nuanced, shall we say.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>And certainly the Church has protected these priests, moved them around the country, away from an area where their activities had become known. The Church has some very dingy closets to clean out.<br><br>That being said, the witch-hunt atmosphere is very disagreeable and getting worse. Years of prison time seems out of line with what the Boston priest actually did. The same NPR program featuring Mahoney had the story of two priests in northern Maine, driven from their parishes by the diocese, against the desires of the congregation, who knew their pasts, felt comfortable with them. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburnsins.html">www.counterpunch.org/cockburnsins.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>The tone definitely begins to change. Here's a lead paragraph from David Lindorff in 2005:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The public and media obsession with victims of Catholic priest abuse, which includes the hounding down of alleged molesters decades after the alleged incidents of abuse occurred, stands in stark and shameful contrast to the almost complete disinterest shown for tracking down the far more vicious abuse of prisoners by their American military or intelligence unit captors.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04262005.html">www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04262005.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>I'm aware the context is more about Abu Ghraib and the shame of NOT investigating that, but still, the tone has clearly shifted.<br><br>By the way, Cockburn has always been a debunker of satanic abuse claims, including McMartin, though this, to be fair to dbd, was not what he asked me to prove..still, for those interested, a typical sample:<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/pollitt.html">www.counterpunch.org/pollitt.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>Here's an article generally questioning laws against sex with minors. Note that I think some arguments are valid here...there's nothing magic about the age "18"...but see if you think it goes too far.. (many of these aren't by Cockburn, but anything in Counterpunch goes through him and I'm just pulling stuff as I find it...CP writes a LOT about this topic.)<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/kuehl04152006.html">www.counterpunch.org/kuehl04152006.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>Notice this particularly strange idea:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>For a woman, even if she's the initiator, allowing a teenage male to enter her body is a "vulnerable act." Conversely, for a teenage male, entering the body of a women is not a "vulnerable act." For him, vaginal penetration is a supremely empowering act. Vulnerability is not a matter of age but of penetration, and possible impregnation.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>This remark misses the point by so far that it's amazing...<br><br>Now, everyone will need to decide if I should withdraw my remark about Cockburn...because <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/jw01292005.html">this article</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> seems like the one I remember. It's in CP but not by Cockburn. They say he is unjustly accused. Boston Globe summarizes this way:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>But those who turned to Shanley for comfort and guidance often found themselves in the clutches of a sexual predator. Thousands of pages of documents show that church officials knew of numerous sexual abuse allegations against Shanley and that the priest had publicly advocated sex between men and boys. Despite this, Shanley was shuttled from parish to parish in the Boston Archdiocese, and eventually transferred to a California church with a letter of recommendation from one of Cardinal Bernard Law's top deputies.<br><br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/shanley/">www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/shanley/</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>I know papers lie, but "thousands of pages"? Notice the CP article how the crux of the entire argument against Shanley's accusers is "repressed memories are bogus". Now, in this case, it looks like repressed memories and thousands of pages of documents, but maybe those came out later. The other sort of strange argument is that Shanely admits to having sex with gay teens he ministered to, so therefore, younger boys were not his M.O. personally, sex under cover of authority is the big issue here anyway....gay teen in need of "ministering" probably means confused and frightened and easy to exploit. if they were 15 - 17 that doesn't really make it that much better.<br><br>In other words, a victim spontanesously remembered abuse by this priest, who by coincidence was doing many of his teen charges, but there's nothing to the accusation by the original accuser.<br><br>Oh and here is Cockburn on Shanley and on Michael Jackson:<br><br>What If Jackson had been on Trial in Massachusetts?<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN<br><br>and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR<br><br>There's at least one man recently convicted of homosexual misconduct with a minor, now serving a twelve to fifteen-year sentence, who surely received news of Michael Jackson's acquittal with a sigh of envy at the quality of Jackson's defense team and the sturdy independence of a jury that refused to be swayed by the lynch mob atmosphere that has hung over the Jackson trial like a toxic fog. Well return forthwith to that convicted sex offender, Father Paul Shanley, but first, what lessons should we draw from Jackson's acquittal on all counts?<br><br>The not-guilty verdict for Jackson shows once again what can happen when the prosecution and defense are on at least an equal footing. Jackson had a top-flight lawyer with an unlimited budget. The prosecutors did what most prosecutors do in America: pile up the charges, on the calculation that the defendant will plead out.<br><br>In most criminal cases the over-charging is accompanied by the allegations of jail-house snitches and by lies on the witness stand from cops. The defendants have either no budget at all or only modest resources. They can't afford expert witnesses, or private investigators to pick the prosecution's case apart.<br><br>When a defendant can afford a good lawyer, top-flight investigators, expert witnesses and kindred firepower, very often the prosecution's case simply falls apart, starting with sloppy handling of evidence, compromised forensic work and contradictory testimony from the police.<br><br>In Jackson's case the piling up of the charges led the prosecution into the "conspiracy" disaster. They had to put the mother of the boy with cancer on the stand to elicit testimony about her supposed kidnapping on the Jackson estate. Every minute that mother stayed on the stand, the prosecution took a terrible beating.<br><br>The twelve did exactly what jurors should do and offered a magnificent example of the abiding importance of the jury as the fundamental bulwark of freedom in this Republic. In their press conference the jurors laid waste the disappointed lynch mob with dignified and articulate responses.<br><br>Their bottom line was simple: the prosecution had simply failed to make its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Such outrageous prosecutorial strategies, okayed by the judge, as allowing the jury to hear previous allegations (many of them not even first hand accounts) against Jackson on which he'd not been convicted had cut no ice with these jurors. "He may have molested one of those kids, but they never proved he molested this kid", one juror said.<br><br>Nor were the jurors ever jolted from common sense. Those stacks of lurid porn, which the prosecution spent more than a week projecting in front of the jury on a giant screen in an attempt to further sully Jackson's reputation? So what, said a juror. Jackson's an adult. So what if the magazines were called "Barely Legal"? The key word is "legal", offered another juror.<br><br>It was a great day for the jury and a gratifying blow against the lynch mob, including outfits such as CNN which averted their gaze from photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib, while stigmatizing Jackson as the supreme abuser.<br><br>The jury in Santa Maria also dealt a much deserved blow to the social police, the cabal of psychologists, "victim's rights" lawyers and therapists who, through a kind of modern-day mesmerism, yanked and manipulated tales of molestation from poor teens who had roamed the playgrounds of Neverland.<br><br>This gang of self-appointed termagants, lead by Gloria Allred and child psychologist Carol Lieberman, has been hounding Jackson since 1993, filing complaints with child welfare offices across southern California and ultimately bullying the DA's office into bringing this failed case. Allred even went so far as to try to have the state seize Jackson's own children.<br><br>But that jury in Santa Maria sent them all packing.<br><br>Contrast this process in Santa Barbara County to the disgraceful trial of Father Paul Shanley who was convicted in Massachusetts earlier this year, based on testimony far, far flimsier than what the jury rejected in the Jackson case.<br><br>Shanley was found guilty on the uncorroborated testimony of one man's "recovered memories" of abuse at the hands of Shanley many years before. Paul Busa claimed Shanley had pulled him out of religious classes and sexually abused him for years starting when he was six. Not a single witness from those who had worked at the school could corroborate these memories in any way.<br><br>These days "recovered memory" has been thoroughly discredited. The judge should have thrown the case out. The jury was caught up in the hysteria. A skilled defense attorney could have mounted as deadly an assault on the recovered memories as Jackson's lawyer did on the "kidnaped" mother. But Shanley's lawyer was not up to the challenge.<br><br>So the 74-year Shanley drew a 12 to 15 year prison sentence in a case where the lynch mob atmosphere generated by the Boston Globe and other media had a chilling effect on both judge and jury. The prosecutors must have known how lucky they were. Aware of the weakness of their case, last year they'd offered Shanley two years' house arrest. He refused the deal, insisting he was innocent.<br><br>It shows that culturally and intellectually Santa Barbara County is a hundred times more enlightened than that home of the witch trials, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But what county in America isn't?<br><br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06152005.html">www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06152005.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>have a look at this stuff. In my own mind, I remembered the above two articles on Shanley and also a history of CP printing articles on "recovered memories" and the like (there are lots more of those, dismissing all allegations in things like McMartin.)<br><br>I'd also add that CP is a haven for the "formers". Former NSA guy Wayne Madsen. "Former" CIA guys Ray McGovern, and the Christisons. "Former" Reagan official (okay, well, he really is a former Reagan official as Reagan is dead) Paul Craig Roberts. Roberts wrote extensively on the "Wenatchee Sex ring" a case about a ring of pedophiles in a small town. I'm not familiar with the case...conventional wisdom now says that the case was just another bogus "hysteria" case from the nineties. I couldn't find an article by Roberts on that case on CP...but he does refer to it on CP.<br><br>Okay...look this stuff over. Was I too harsh in this respect? Is Cockburn really concerned with injustice and homophobia (which does play into this for sure...). <br><br> <p></p><i></i>