Church service interrupted by arrest of pastor

It happens way too often to be one bad apple it seems to me.

I love that the arrest happened in the middle of a service.

Too bad it wasn't a televised service!!

I hope that the bulk of the children that were being abused were sitting in church and watched the arrest happen. It won't mitigate what happened to them, but it will at least let them know that it won't be happening again by these same men. If it has been happening for 30 years, does that mean that it is possible that a child who had been abused grew up, had their own children, and took them to that same church knowing full well what would happen to them too? I appreciate that they were thorough in their investigations so that the arrests would stick, but I feel so badly for the children that were abused from the time it was reported in 2020 until the actual arrest. I hope someone was doing some monitoring and not allowing these men to be alone in a room with any child while they were putting their case together.

That was my first thought too.  No hushing that one up!  

I honestly wish this was done more often.  Bring on the public shaming!  His victims had the courage to speak to the police and help with the investigation.  There's no question of his guilt (or the other wankers).  He deserves the same privacy, dignity and respect that he gave to each of his victims, which is none.  

If you behave like a bag of trash, expect to be treated like a bag of trash.  

(I'll preface this by saying that I'm certainly not the most experienced to speak to this as I didn't grow up in a very religious family going to church weekly, but I grew up in a predominantly Catholic area, and did go to church with my aunt & family on a fairly regular basis.)

I don't think it's as black & white as that. In my experiences, people don't tend to 'church hop' when they stay in same area. The Catholic church (like many others I'm sure), is such a part of peoples lives, that the priest(s), and your fellow parishioners become part of your family. It was really an honor (and bragging right, of course ) for your son to be chosen as an altar boy. 30, 40, etc years ago, sadly, kids (especially boys I think ) often didn't tell anyone about sexual abuse. They were embarrassed, ashamed or felt like it was their fault (Catholic guilt?! NO!!) If they did say anything, I'm sure, back then a lot of people wouldn't have believed it. Not THEIR beloved priest. 'Father John would NEVAH do somethin' like that! He's a wicked good man. A saint, that one!" I can just hear the denials.

All that to say that yes, I do think that a child that's been abused by a person who's supposed to be of such higher moral ground than the average person, such as a priest/minister/rabbi, etc...can & does grow up and continue to go to the church and takes their family there. Not with the mindset of "knowing it will happen to their kids" though. I think they would be super vigilant to be sure it never happened to their kids. But the church is such a part of their overall life (including extended family, church family, etc...) that if they left there would be a ton of questions that they may not be prepared or want to answer.





I think of this too. I really hope that no children were "collateral damage" so that they could build a solid case. Makes me think of Jarred Fogle and how long investigators listened to the tapped telephone line of the lady he was talking to and that he could've been stopped sooner. I'm pretty sure there was "collateral damage" in that case and I don't know how police or FBI justify that.

I was listening to a True Crime podcast the other day, and the episode was about the child sex abuse of hundreds of children here by Marist Brothers, and all of the resulting suicides by the boys who were abused. They referred to 'Papal secrets', and how the families of the abused children were warned not to go to the police. If they went to the police instead of letting the church deal with it themselves, they would be ex-communicated. 

As an Atheist, I have a really hard time understanding why parents were prepared to go along with that. I guess that's why they were able to get away with it for 35 years. 

How's this for some horror statistics: 

The evidence delivered to the 2016 Royal Commission into child sexual abuse:
~ 154 Marist Brothers were officially accused of child sexual abuse between 1980 and 2015, and many of them have been convicted or had claims paid out to victims.
~ 20% of the Marist Brothers order between 1950 and 2010 were paedophiles.
~ Claims of abuse against the Marist Brothers accounted for a quarter of all claims received by religious institutions.
~ 486 people made a claim of abuse against the Marist Brothers between 1980 and 2015.
~ The average age of claimants at the time of the abuse was 12.
~ 89% of these claims identified one or more religious brothers as a perpetrator.


Edited to add the link to the article: The Marist Brothers and a secret list of 154 accused child sex offenders

I listen to two Australian true crime podcasts: Life & Crimes with Andrew Rule, and True Crime Conversations. The first one is mainly (only?) Australian crimes. The second one does a lot of Australian crimes and also crimes from the US and other countries. The one about the Marist Brothers was True Crime Conversations.

It won't. Case in point, Anna Duggar.