'Look what he's taken from me': the deadly toll of Catholic church sex abuse on Guam
Nearly 300 sexual abuse lawsuits have been filed against nearly two dozen priests on the island, and while local newspapers still regularly publish stories detailing new accusations they’re now so familiar they no longer make the front page.
Archbishop Apuron, who still receives a $1,500 monthly stipend from the church, is now the subject of multiple civil lawsuits alleging sex abuse and has not returned to Guam. His attorney declined to comment for this story.
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“At that time, when I was that age, I got the impression that kids liked it, so I went ahead,” priest Brouillard told the Associated Press in 2016. He didn’t know how many children he abused.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe 20.”
Brouillard, who died in 2018, was never prosecuted for his offences, because the statute of limitations for child molestation was two years. He said that other members of the church knew about his abuse but did not tell him to stop, instead telling him to pray.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/m...se-on-guam
Nearly 300 sexual abuse lawsuits have been filed against nearly two dozen priests on the island, and while local newspapers still regularly publish stories detailing new accusations they’re now so familiar they no longer make the front page.
Archbishop Apuron, who still receives a $1,500 monthly stipend from the church, is now the subject of multiple civil lawsuits alleging sex abuse and has not returned to Guam. His attorney declined to comment for this story.
[...]
“At that time, when I was that age, I got the impression that kids liked it, so I went ahead,” priest Brouillard told the Associated Press in 2016. He didn’t know how many children he abused.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe 20.”
Brouillard, who died in 2018, was never prosecuted for his offences, because the statute of limitations for child molestation was two years. He said that other members of the church knew about his abuse but did not tell him to stop, instead telling him to pray.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/m...se-on-guam
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
