This article was
first published in The Universe
The Hidden hhHiddPaedophiles?
By Dwight Longenecker
A priest friend of
mine had a devastating time two years
ago. One of his fellow priests got
into trouble. Father Steve (not his
real name) was a good and diligent
priest. His parishioners loved him
and said he was one of the best priests
they could remember. But Fr. Steve
(like all of us) had a shadow side
to his personality. Late at night
he was accessing pornography on the
internet. The pornography involved
young children. Fr. Steve became
addicted and ordered some videos
from one of the companies. After
he ordered the second video the police
knew there was no mistake and they
knocked on the presbytery door.
Steve was taken away,
tried and convicted on child pornography
charges. He was given a jail sentence.
His life was ruined. He will probably
never work as a priest again. Furthermore,
the faith of all those who looked
up to him as a priest has also been
tainted. Fr. Steve was full of remorse
and shame. He was rightly sentenced
for a terrible crime. We cannot make
excuses for priests like Fr. Steve,
but cases like his should make us
stop and ask some wider questions.
Fr. Steve committed real crimes.
The children who were abused for
the pictures and films Fr. Steve
viewed were real children whose lives
were probably destroyed by the abuse.
In using in pornography Fr. Steve,
and others like him, share passively
in that child abuse.
But Fr. Steve
did not actually abuse any children
himself.
No one suggested that he interfered
with any child in his care. Fr Steve
didn’t rape anyone or groom anyone
for a sexual relationship. It is
right that Fr. Steve was convicted
and punished for child pornography.
We prosecuted Fr. Steve, but how
do we treat those who are guilty
of actual child abuse? Those guilty
of child porn are punished severely.
But despite their wrong doing, all
they did was look at pictures. In
our hypocritical society these men
are punished severely while other
men who are having sex with underage
girls are rarely, if ever, punished
at all.
We have a nurse
friend who works in a family planning
clinic
in the troubled part of one of our
big university cities. She tells
us how she (a non-Catholic) gives
out contraceptives regularly to girls
as young as eleven and twelve. Britain
has the highest rate of teen pregnancies
in Europe and many of the teen mums
become pregnant when they are under
the age of sexual consent. If we
are really intent on stopping child
abuse why are not social workers,
health workers and the police working
together to discover and prosecute
the men who are not just looking
at pictures, but actually having
a full sexual relationship with under-age
girls? The law is simple and clear.
If a man has sex with a girl under
the age of sixteen he is guilty of
a crime. It doesn’t matter if the
girl has consented. The law says
she is below the age of legal consent.
Having sex with her is a crime. Simple.
Can it be right for
thousands of men every year to have
sexual relations with under age girls
and never be prosecuted? The reason
these men are not prosecuted is because
many of them are also teenagers,
and we have swallowed the current
propaganda that sex between teenagers
is just a fun recreational activity.
But is teen sex just innocent fun?
The fact of the matter is, that most
teenaged girls will go with boys
who are a couple of years older than
they are. Most of the girls are pressured
into a sexual relationship by those
older young men. In other words,
an older man is abusing an underage
girl. He could therefore be prosecuted.
But when is the last time you heard
of a nineteen year old lad being
prosecuted for having sex with a
fifteen year old girl?
Our society
turns a blind eye because we think
they
are simply having a bit of harmless
fun. But is teen sex harmless fun?
Sexually transmitted diseases are
not fun. At the beginning of December
it was reported that in Britain in
the year 2000 there were a record
3616 reports of HIV infection. At
the same time diagnoses of gonorrhoea,
syphilis and chlamydia more than
doubled between 1995 and 2000. The
Public Health Laboratory Service
said the trends were particularly
worrying in young people. One in
every 100 women between 16 and 19
years old was diagnosed with chlamydia
last year and as many as 1 in 11
young women might have the infection
without knowing it. My nurse friend
suggests the situation is actually
worse. Numbers are kept artificially
low because incidents of underage
boys and girls suffering from sexually
transmitted diseases are not reported.
Sexually transmitted
diseases are not harmless fun. Neither
is having a baby at the age of fourteen.
In Britain each year there are nearly
90,000 conceptions by teenagers,
three fifths of which result in live
births. More than 7,000 of these
are to girls under 16 and 2,000 or
so to girls of 14 and under. Is it
harmless fun for a fourteen year
old girl to devote her life to looking
after a baby? In such situations
the girl may do her very best, but
will it be ‘harmless fun’ for the
baby to be brought up in such a disadvantaged
home?
At least the
teen mums have not had abortions. They
are not ‘harmless fun’ either. In
November of last year the Birmingham
Evening Mail reported that in the
West Midlands area alone in 2001
more than 120 girls under 15 had
abortions. Last Autumn, in the Birmingham
area, a girl who was only nine years
old had an abortion. What age was
the father of the aborted infant? Was
he prosecuted for underage sex? If
he was underage himself was he given
appropriate legal warnings?
Finally, what
is the emotional cost of teen sex?
Is
it harmless fun for a fourteen-year-old
girl to be dropped by her seventeen-year-old
boyfriend? How does a girl feel when
a boy gets what he wants and then
throws her away like a sweet wrapper?
Quite apart from the young lives
wrecked by fatal diseases, unwanted
pregnancies and abortion, their whole
attitude to sex and marriage is ruined
forever. Will such teenagers ever
be able to establish permanent relationships
and loving families of their own?
The child abuse
problem is immense and complex, and
there
are no quick or easy answers, but
one way forward is to treat sex with
the seriousness that it requires.
Young lives are at stake. It is right
to prosecute internet paedophiles,
but our social services, health professionals
and police should also work together
to punish men who are guilty of the
actual sexual abuse of young women
under the age of sixteen—no matter
who they are or what their age.
Return
to Articles main page
