The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Apparently from 1830 to the late 1990s residential "schools" were setup and run in Canada to integrate and assimilate first nations peoples (canadian native americans). These schools were run by the government and churches (anglican and catholic). They've been discovering unmarked graves of thousands of children at these locations. People are really mad at this.

With the very poor track record churches have with covering up abuse the result is inevitable and over the past few days 7 churches have been burned to the ground across Canada, probably with more to come.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dnyk/more-churches-torched-in-canada-as-outrage-against-catholics-grows

If children were raped and killed at Dennys as much as they've been at church, I would like to believe that we've had burned every Dennys to the ground already. I'm not saying that I condone arson, but I understand the anger. And when government tries to sweep this under the rug and justice is denied, people will make their own justice.

Sometimes you need to be like the Wild West..... clean everything up with six guns or torches/pitchforks.

I hear what you're saying, and can even appreciate a little righteous anger...but no, we don't ever-ever-ever need the Wild West back again. On our species' developmental arc, that is the absolute opposite direction that we should be going.

From a strictly emotional standpoint, I'm right there with you.  But as a civilized society, we can't let emotion 100% dictate our response to horrible things.  I will admit that I feel like a hypocrite for saying that, because if I had a child who was a victim of sexual abuse, etc., I would be arrested for murder.   

Go see the movie Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg and Danny Glover.  Towards the end, the AG says to Wahlberg, "This isn't the Wild West and you can't clean up everything with a six gun.  But sometimes, that's exactly what is needed."   That prompted Wahlberg to hunt down and kill the corrupt people in the movie at the end.

Movie...

That doesn't make you a hypocrite, for two reasons:

1) You don't believe we should put victims (or their relatives) in charge of sentencing
2) You understand that in the situation you described, you would be a murderer

It's not hypocritical at all to say "This is how our society should work" while understanding that your emotions would change if you were involved.  Setting this particular example in Canada aside, if you were falsely accused of sexual assault, I'm sure you'd like a chance to prove your innocence before you were murdered.

I've seen it...a couple of times. I just don't look to an action movie to determine how I deal with people in the real world.

Although I find this deplorable, at any time, I think there is added context needed.  Specifically when did these deaths occur???  If they were occurring in the 1800's or early 1900's, it doesn't make sense to me to go blaming people now that weren't even alive when the atrocities occurred.  If we trace the roots of every person in the U.S. we could find many people that had ancestors who owned slaves; is it okay to go burn their (possibly your) house down??

Did you bother to read the article?  they remained active until the late 1990s.  So less than 30 years ago.  The Catholic Church has a history of protecting those who commit atrocities.

Understatement of the year right there.  The Catholic Church is the biggest pedophile ring in the world and their history of just "transferring" the ones who get caught is nauseating. 

Pedophilia is actually not nearly as bad as you would think.  Teachers are way worse and it's not even close.  The cover-ups are what is inexcusable. 

One thing I've always noticed and I see it all the time on the news with teachers who fuck their students.  If it's a male teacher, it's always an overweight middle aged slob looking guy.   If it's a female teacher, she is always smokin' hot and could have anyone she wants, guy or girl.

Really?  Schools and teachers are worse?  Don't know of a single instance of a pedophilia teacher being transferred to a different school system rather than be prosecuted.

I think he means that it's more rampant in the public school systems than in the catholic church.

If, as you say yourself, the cover-ups are what are inexcusable, then how are teachers "way worse"?

The problem with the Catholic Church is not that child molesters exist and some are affiliated with the church.  There are bad people within every organization: from clergy to teachers, from police to doctors, from athletes to social workers.  The problem is specifically the institutional cover-up from higher ups, and that problem is not "way worse" in schools.

Exactly.  And since the church is so skilled at covering it up, that means that there are far more offenders within the church than anyone knows because their rampant covering up of the offenses means that many of the offenders are never found out. 

I don't like to see anything burn, but I guess I understand that frustration isn't always logical.

Churches, especially.  I'm no fan of churches, in general, but there's a pretty sordid history when it comes to burning down churches.

I realize that his claim.  And I call bullshit on that claim.  In public schools isolated issues are a single bad teacher with the rest fully committed to protecting the children.  Within the church those who don't actually commit the abuse are willing participants in the cover up. 

I agree with you there.  But statuatory rape/child molestation incidents happen more often in the public schools simply because there are more of them than there are catholic churches in this country.  Way more.

I swear, if you guys aren't twisting someone's words at every opportunity.  Let me be extremely clear.

Pedophilia is as bad as it gets.  Teachers commit more acts of pedophilia than the Catholic Church, and it isn't even close.  There is a misconception that a very large number of priests are molesting children.  That is not the case, however the willingness the Catholic Church has to cover it up is why it makes it so bad...not only are priests abusing children, the higher ups are covering it up.

You can't really compare number of incidents.  There are roughly 3.5 million teachers in the US.  There are 37,000 priests.

How can you even know that?

In order to say that, you would have to have a number on how many cases are successfully being covered up by the Catholic Church.

You're talking about the number of teacher molestation cases as if it's so high that there's no way the Catholic Church could possibly be covering up that many incidents, and I don't think that's true at all.

Well, according this, it goes on to say 3.5 million students, or roughly 7%, reported some sort of sexual abuse from teachers or coaches.  And this only includes grades 8th-11th

https://childrenstreatmentcenter.com/sexual-abuse-teachers/ (https://childrenstreatmentcenter.com/sexual-abuse-teachers/)

And according to this, 10,667 individuals were abused by priests or clergy in 52 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases#:~:text=According%20to%20a%202004%20research,sexual%20abuse%20by%2010%2C667%20individuals. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases#:~:text=According%20to%20a%202004%20research,sexual%20abuse%20by%2010%2C667%20individuals.)

Damn those pesky facts.

Facts matter. 

The first says 7% of children have had some sort of inappropriate contact by all adults.  That includes teachers, coaches, priests, parents, friends parents etc. Including unreported cases.

The second one is the number of abuse case by the Catholic church as acknowledged by the Catholic church.

Not even apples and oranges.  You comparing apples and the number yellow.

Fair enough.  If those numbers are accurate, that is indeed a lot more.

I still don't think there's an equivalency between the kind of abuse being reported at that link and intentional cover-ups by Catholic authorities.  And going back to the OP, the outrage is at the cover-up - the unmarked graves being discovered.

i'm pretty sure the outrage is mostly about the genocide and the coverup was just the straw

Is (open and unobscured) native genocide a new and unheard of thing in Canada?  I thought they had a lot of similar history in that regard.

well these are children, i think that was new

Canada didn’t have nearly as much genocide as the US.  Massive forced assimilation, including kidnapping children so orphanage could teach them Christianity rather than their native culture was Canada approach.  The facts that the children were killed rather than indoctrinated is new (and worse)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/is-sexual-abuse-in-schools-very-common.html (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/is-sexual-abuse-in-schools-very-common.html)

The best available study suggests that about 10 percent of students suffer some form of sexual abuse during their school careers. In the 2000 report, commissioned by the American Association of University Women, surveyors asked students between eighth and 11th grades whether they had ever experienced inappropriate sexual conduct at school. The list of such conduct included lewd comments, exposure to pornography, peeping in the locker room, and sexual touching or grabbing. Around one in 10 students said they had been the victim of one or more such things from a teacher or other school employee, and two-thirds of those reported the incident involved physical contact. If these numbers are representative of the student population nationwide, 4.5 million students currently in grades K-12 have suffered some form of sexual abuse by an educator, and more than 3 million have experienced sexual touching or assault.

If lewd comments and exposure to pornography qualify...I'm surprised that number isn't higher.

I don’t doubt 10% of students have heard a comment they considered lewd.  But a high school student being described as “attractive” by a school employee would meet that standard.  And, yes, that would be inappropriate.  But that is not the same thing as what the churches covered up.

you mean thousands of unmarked graves ? yes .. that's different

You conveniently left out the part that matters and focused on the part that didn't...

If these numbers are representative of the student population nationwide, 4.5 million students currently in grades K-12 have suffered some form of sexual abuse by an educator, and more than 3 million have experienced sexual touching or assault.

First you call my post bullshit then you say I'm comparing apples to the number yellow, then you move the goalpost when I was only defending my post from earlier.  I don't understand what you're getting at.

If you dig a little deeper that sentence is technically correct and highly misleading….

4.5 million students have had an inappropriate interaction with a teacher, administrator,  coach or other school employee which could range from something extremely serious such as sex to something relatively minor such a comment or staring. Also 3 million students have experienced sexual touching or assault by either an adult or another student.  (mostly peers)  But the sentence is structured to imply something very different.  And misinterpreted by most reports that rely on the initial misleading summary. 

So does this mean you still believe Catholic Priests are abusing kids at a higher rate than teachers?  What's your point is what I'm asking.

I believe that Catholic priests (and lets be real, evangelical ministers as well) are abusing children sexually while being aided and abetted by the organizations they represent, These churches all try to cover this up so that they aren't met with scandal and have for many years. I trust 0 clergy. Not a single one. They are all tainted.

Yes, Catholic priests abuse children at a muc higher rate than teachers.  This is NOT the same thing as saying more children have been abused by a priest. Just that priest do it a much higher rate than teachers.  These are not the same thing, almost every child has multiple interactions with teachers and a number of them have had at least one bad experience with one out of the hundred or so teachers they interacted with.  OTOH, only a small number of children (relatively) has ever interacted with a priest, and a large number of those children have been abused by that priest.

But more importantly, while there have been incidents of teachers being allowed to resign after an accusation and then got hired elsewhere without the new school knowing of the past problems and getting hired elsewhere.  And some teachers and schools have engaged in coverups.  But for the most part teachers and administrators take abuse seriously.  You don’t have superintendents contacting other districts trying to place a serial rapist in a new school, the way the church moved around rapists.  There are bad teachers just like there are bad priests, the difference is the church’s systematic enabling of abuse.  

That is pretty much the bottom line for me.  The huge number of teachers compared to clergy makes an incident per incident comparison useless.  And as you said, it is rare for a teacher's leadership to try to cover up abuse.  Whereas it is rare for church leadership to NOT try to cover up abuse. 

Most of what you said I already addressed, so you're actually agreeing with me lol.  But you are incorrect about the "much higher rate".  Like I stated earlier, 10,667 individuals were abused by priests or clergy in 52 years.  Even if they covered up more than that, it is pure speculation on your part and I don't think it would increase the number that much.  What I've posted regarding teachers is the closest you'll find to an accurate study.  You also have to keep in mind, teachers have a high turnover of students year in and year out, while priests are usually dealing with the same congregation, with fewer new people.  We both agree though, the fact that the Catholic church covers this up and is enabling the abuse makes it another degree of evil.  I have no love for the Catholic church, personally I think they have perverted Christianity and it's true belief system since the Great Schism in 1054 when it branched off from Christian Orthodox, but to me facts are facts, and the fact is priests don't abuse children as much as people think they do.

Lets research the number of students who have been abused by teachers using two different methods.

Method 1: Ask the superintendent of the school “how many students have been victims of pedephilia perpetrated by teachers.”

Method 2: Ask students if even once in their lifetime has a teacher, coach or other school official said something that made you uncomfortable, touched you in a way that made you uncomfortable, etc…..”

Do you think method 2 would yield a higher number than method 1 and maybe even capture some stuff that wasn’t actually inappropriate, but just an overly sensitive teen?  Do you think method 1 would underreport, missing both unreported case and abuse that was quite serious but didn’t involve intercourse?

Because method 1 is basically the Catholic church.  Method 2 is the study you cited.  The studies are not comparable .

 Plus further relevant info.  The study was done in a school district with known problems and extrapolated to the entire country.  Basically the equivalent as doing a poll in NYC about traffic and extrapolating it to conclude how much time all Americans are stuck in traffic. 

Yes I read the article that the schools remained in use until the 1990's, but it also covers a 130+ year time period.  The article fails to indicate when the deaths occurred, or when the abuse was occurring.  And again I don't condone any of it; however are we going to take retribution on people for something that happened in their lineage 100 years ago??

There are living survivors with first hand accounts of the abuse. I'm not sure how much more recent you want.