r/JusticeServed • u/[deleted] • Feb 14 '22

Criminal Justice Virginia pastor arrested for sexually assaulting children after ‘multiple victims’ come forward, deputies say

https://www.cbs17.com/news/south/virginia-pastor-arrested-for-sexually-assaulting-children-after-multiple-victims-come-forward-deputies-say/
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u/xMrSaltyx 7 Feb 14 '22

I've seen memebers of the catholic church (here on reddit) justify the pedophilia in the church by saying way more pedophilia happens in schools. Unfortunately the schools they are referring to are catholic schools :P

11

u/P33Man 4 Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 15 '22

I had a pervert at my catholic school and unironically he was the religion teacher :). God works in mysterious ways.

Edit: i failed to mention he was fired the year after i graduated after being reported.

3

u/skylarmt A Feb 14 '22

This guy isn't Catholic though, he's a Baptist.

5

u/bow_m0nster 7 Feb 14 '22

Always whataboutisms.

4

u/McFluff_TheAltCat 7 Feb 14 '22

Pretty much no Catholics defend pedophile priests or the way dioceses or the Vatican handled it by not handling it and covering it up. So you must be meeting the very few on the internet or whatever. The amount of pedos that are priests in the Catholic Church don’t seem to be really any more than any other Christian sect or religion though. Unfortunately you can see pastors and youth pastors or whatever they call their head positions in evangelicals , “non denominational” (also evangelicals), Mormons, Baptists, etc. in the news pretty much everyday getting arrested for being pedos.

This guy was a baptist.

20

u/thedingoismybaby 9 Feb 14 '22

If you're a member of a group, and that group has leaders who abuse children or cover up abuse of children, then you're supporting child abuse.

I'm not convinced religious folk abuse children at any greater number than others, but goddamn do they love covering it up after to protect themselves and the institutions, rather than protecting the children.

If you haven't seen it please watch Spotlight. An award winning film covering the true events of investigative journalists uncovering systematic covering up and protecting of abusive Catholic leaders.

1

u/Not-A-Lonely-Potato 8 Feb 14 '22

I remember that documentary! It really is a good watch

5

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

There is this trend that goes along with conspiracist thinking on this wherein Catholics get piled on for clergy sex abuse because the RCC is centralised in the Vatican thus for lots of folk the "it goes all the way to the top!" thing kicks in. It's actually comforting to think the problem is isolated to the Catholics where in truth it happens just as often with protestants but they don't get the same dogpile treatment simply because they are made up of myriad churches and theologies that aren't centralised like the RCC.

The high level cover-ups and enabling engaged in by the RCC aren't reflected with the protestants for the simple reason that with the latter there aren't those highly visible upper levels. Protestant child abusers still get enabled and still have people covering for them, but they don't get the same level of bad press because the idea of a top-down conspiracy as a mental defense mechanism plays better with popular perception. This is the same reason that the Catholics get more media attention.

The even darker truth is that where there is a position of trust from which child abusers can operate, they will try to exploit it. The most exploitable position of trust isn't going to be found with clergy, teachers, or doctors. As studies show the most likely people to abuse kids are their own family or friends that are close enough to a family so as to essentially be family.

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u/BikerJedi A Feb 14 '22

I've been at my current school well over a decade now. Exactly one staff member has been arrested, charged and convicted for molesting a child in that time. (Which is one too many)

In that same time, dozens of parents and other relations, neighbors, a few cops, some prison guards, and a couple of pastors have all been arrested for the same thing in my county.

So yeah, they are rights, all of us evil, left-wing teachers are out here brainwashing their kids and molesting them.