Mass. attorney general Tom “where’s the camera” Reilly’s office is criticizing the Archdiocese of Boston for “gaps” in sex abuse prevention plans. It said the archdiocese has yet to come up with a method of overseeing or tracking priests who have been removed from ministry after allegations of abuse and hasn’t “completed sexual-abuse prevention programs for children.”
Here’s the fundamental problem, which unfortunately the archdiocese doesn’t seem to see: Why is it the Church’s duty to run sex abuse prevention programs for children? Now, I can agree that the archdiocese has a duty to make sure that it has oversight of priests and employees to prevent them from abusing kids, but under what law or principle does the Church have an obligation to educate kids about sex abuse? The Church doesn’t have that authority. Only parents have that authority. Now if there were an optional program offered for parents who could sign up to receive training that they could pass on to their kids that would be fine. But forcing the Archdiocese to force “touching safety” programs on kids is unconscionable and a violation of our rights. Why not require the Church to teach, say, gun safety? Kids need to be safe around guns. Oh, is it because some bishops were negligent and allowed abuse to occur in Church? So why does that mean that the Church must take on the role of “safe environment sex education” programs? It should just mean the Church has to make sure it doesn’t put abusers among kids.
Substituting sex education for religious education
Clap, clap, clap…
This should be faxed to Reilly’s office.
I was talking to an older woman, who has grandchildren in public school. She herself was upset, on what they have to teach children about strangers/ and not-so-stangers and touching. It’s our job to also protect their innocence.
There are a lot of bad people out there, but there are also a lot of good people out there too. It is horrible that a child walks around the supermarket, or looks around in the pew with their parent, and wonders if all these people are bad and going to hurt them.
I don’t get it, as a child growing up I was told that no stanger could touch me, but by the time I was 13 they were telling me it was perfectly ok to have sex with a fellow peer as long as we used a condom.
It appears that authorities in the Catholic Church in the Boston Archdiocese are such an easy target for Attorney General Tom Reilly’s office.
Every parish is required to set up a program to make sure children are not victims of child abuse. If the parents do not think that the TAT program reflects the teachings of the Catholic Church on purity and chastity, then they are to be held to blame if their child gets sexually abused. All the same time, the Atty. Gen.‘s office claims that if a child tests positive for the HIV infection when tested at any facility that comes under the jurisdiction of the Mass. Dept. of Public Health’s HIV/AIDS Bureau, that Atty. Gen. Reilly’s office is not responsible for the policy of the HIV/AIDS Bureau. This policy which is printed in “HIV and AIDS: Information for Young People” gaurantees that “no one else, even those closest to you, can obtain a copy of your test results.” Since the Director of the HIV/AIDS Bureau, Kevin Cranston, had stated in Bay Windows,issue of July 10,2003:“HIV in youth on the rise” by Ethan Jacobs, that “Young gay men are at particular risk for contracting HIV when they seek out partners in the adult gay community. The higher rate of HIV infection among older gay men in Massachusetts, many of whom Cranston says are experiencing “prevention fatigue” and are less careful about practicing safer sex, puts youth at greater risk for contracting the virus when they choose adult partners.”. When I wrote to Atty. Gen. Reilly’s office and asked why parents aren’t told when their child has tested positive for HIV and why the person testing the child isn’t a mandatory reporter to legal authorities when there is a suspicion that an adult has had sexual relations with a minor child so that an investigation can take place in order to stop the person from infecting other children, the response I received from Curt Schwartz,Asst. Atty. Gen,Chief, Criminal Bureau, was :“Simply put, I do not know the answers to your two questions because these matters more squarely fall within the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Health.”
When I asked Jean McGuire, who was the director of the HIV/AIDS Bureau before Kevin Cranston, she said that they leave that(reporting) for the child to do. I find this situation incredible!!
It appears that Attorney General Reilly’s office is afraid to take on the Mass. Dept. of Public Health because they know that they will be the target of horrendous accusations of “Homophobic Black Boots”, etc.. But the Catholic Church in the Boston Archdiocese is a much more easy target. And parents who don’t even have the right to know if their child tests positive of HIV/AIDS
possibly because they were infected by an older gay man with “prevention fatigue”, are held responsible for the lack of knowledge of their minor child who was seduced into same-sex sex.