Sunday, July 14

Tom In Paine: Rubin Slams Media for Maltreatment of Paterno

Mark Rubin, at Tom In Paine, provides an accurate account of what drives today's media - their own self-interest.

He shows the lack of media coverage of the Milwaukee archdiocese knowingly covering up child sexual abuse for more than 80 years, while it demeaned and shamed Joe Paterno for making a report of suspected abuse to his superiors within 24 hours receiving it from Mike McQueary.

From the article:


On July 1, pursuant to a judge's court order as part of a bankruptcy settlement over law suits against the church by victims of church child sexual abuse,the Milwaukee archdiocese released online a trove of previously secret documents that chronicled in great detail and specificity, priest by priest, the wide spread, persistent child sexual abuse committed by priests in the Milwaukee archdiocese with the full knowledge of local church hierarchy that according to the documents, span more than 80 years.

This comes on the heels of over 30,000 pages of church documents from the Los Angeles archdiocese also  released by court order, describing sexual abuse of children covered up and allowed to continue by the church.

The Milwaukee documents, like those in Los Angeles chronicle horrific and sordid detailed descriptions of child abuse including sodomy and rape that the church hierarchy  knew about and did nothing to stop, remove or punish the priests involved.

But there is one thing missing from these disclosures and that is, there has not been so much as a word from any of the major news media outlets about these documents or their horrific contents or the gross and even criminal negligence of those who failed to  report or stop the abuse.  No headlines. No major news stories leading TV broadcasts on cable or network TV news. No outrage. None of the usual suspects who show up on cable news to debate controversial issues. No full page newspaper front page pictures with the word "Shame".  Nothing.

Read more here.


2 comments:

  1. Wow... thanks for sharing. And on your link to Tom in Paine is the link to the entire suite of documents on the Milwaukee case, well organized on the website of MN attorney Jeff Anderson.

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  2. There are many examples of community madness in history. 22 people were tried and executed in the Titus Oates hoax of 1680. The Salem Witch trials came a decade later. 19 persons were hanged and one was crushed to death before the hysteria played out. In recent years we have had day-care cases. Mr. Bob at Little Rascals was tried and convicted on 99 charges. Eventually his conviction was over turned and no one pursued the further persecutions of the man. In Mr. Bob's trial, a child testified that the video man kept pet sharks in a salt pond. The video man would take the sharks to play in the nearby bay. Mr. Bob would then chum the water for the sharks with chopped up babies.

    The priest scandal came when changes in statue of limitations opened up settled cases. People believed the settlements to be admissions of guilt. Settlements are often a cheaper resolution than expensive litigation. The settlements then created a moral hazard to greedy lawyers and opportunist families. I never saw any real evidence of actual priest misconduct. One poor guy goosed a kid while playing in a swimming pool. He was given 4 years and was killed in prison. The accuser of Father Shanley came up with stories as bad as the shark story after recovered memory flim-flam.

    What boils my blood is the extortions from an abstract Catholic Church put a tax on parishioners who did noting wrong themselves. We just lost a bunch of nearby parochial grammar schools due in part to liability concerns.

    The moral panic over priests and the Sandusky matter are just two more examples of community madness. Your assertion of guilt of Sandusky does not ring true to me as some lewd intent would be required. Suppose you tore the pants off a boy who just spilled a pot of coffee on himself. Would you want that to be crime?

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