Haven't We Seen this Somewhere Before?

"Teachers should not be allowed to be transferred to another school who have been found guilty of some type of sexual misconduct or indiscretion with students."
"It bothers me that these individual teachers are allowed to move to another school and start all over again."
"One wrong just creates another wrong by transferring. I don't think the answer is to transfer them, but as I said, to deal with it."
Nick Scarfo, assistant professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

"Something is not aligning. I don't understand how the changes that were made in Bill 37 in particular and the process changes that the Ontario College of Teachers have put in place, how this hasn't prevented these kinds of issues."
"This is non-negotiable. You do not want people who have engaged in sexual abuse of students in the Classroom. Full stop."
MPP Peggy Sattler, education critic for the Ontario NDP 

"De Luca easily moved from school to school, leaving behind emotionally wounded victims, with a fresh opportunity to victimize others."
"How could this abuse have gone unchecked for 20 years [Justice Robins wrote 20 years ago]? What can be done to ensure that this will not happen again?"
(retired) Judge Sydney L. Robins

"My school wasn't his first stop, believe it or not. I didn't have a choice in the matter."
"I was totally compromised."
"You have these predators that are in the school system, and everybody wants to give them a chance, but nobody says 'OK, that's enough'."
Retired School principal

Francesco Ciraco (left), sexually assaulted his colleague inside the school elevator in April 2009. He was sent home for three days and transferred to a new school. Ciraco was charged criminally and found guilty in court for the assault, but received an absolute discharge – a finding of guilt without registering a conviction or giving a criminal record. Richard Knill (centre) is currently facing criminal charges for sexual assault and sexual exploitation of two female students. Riaz Khamis (right) pleaded guilty at the College to allegations of professional misconduct including taking non-consensual photographs of his students and storing them with downloaded images of naked women.  (Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star/submitted image)

People in places of trust, betraying the belief that the trust placed in them in their moral obligation to treat their colleagues and the students their profession is meant to guide through the education system have spurned that trust as they chose to release their basest instincts in a succession of predatory pursuits. It was a bleak, dark open secret among parishioners in churches throughout the civilized world that there were some priests and other clerics who abused the trust placed in them as the gossip circuit warmed to the need to be vigilant but failed to protect children exposed to the wiles of such predators.

That the institution of the church had itself established a long tradition of never examining the issue to eradicate that black whisper of bad priests and ruined young lives, choosing instead to protect its reputation by seeing no evil, hearing no evil and routinely moving the evil to another location where a predator-priest's proclivities and actions were unknown to the locals and where he could simply repeat the predations was a moral scandal of incredulous proportions that severely diminished the respect in which the church was held, helping in no small part to accelerate the already-in-progress loss of community support.

Aside from the sanctity of the church environment, only the educational system of community-based primary and secondary schools represented a more safe environment for children in parents' minds. And then there were rumours and the occasional public airing of sexual abuse of schoolchildren on the part of teachers. That these occurrences were rare did not much affect the outrage of the public, aghast that children were being violated. And when the same things were being revealed in sports where trusted coaches were revealed to have similarly abused those in their care, the widespread nature of abuse was fully revealed.

In a climate of sexual persecution and harassment amid increasing reports of violent sexual attacks being aired regularly in the world of celebrity culture, comes word that in Ontario, teachers who have offended the social and professional moral code through sexual misconduct have been treated in the very same manner as the church did their criminal-conduct priests; spiriting them away to other schools where their crimes were unknown, enabling them in effect, to continue their predation in fresh hunting grounds their new school assignments represented represented another betrayal.

The Toronto District School Board had active files on 13 teachers known to have been sexually abusive to their teaching colleagues or to the students they taught. These abusive teachers in their state of authority betrayed were given fresh assignments outside the school where they had offended, placed in a new school where five of the teachers went on to re-offend and eight still remain employed in Toronto while two retired since their alternate placement.

In 2003, the Ontario College of Teachers considered a case that has now been presented before the courts in Brampton, Ontario just outside Toronto, where Richard Knill faces criminal charges on sexual assault and sexual exploitation of female students. This is a man who had allegations levelled against him of sexual abuse of students dating back to 1992 and for the following 25 years he practised sexual abuse of students at various locations, and in that period was transferred to other schools no fewer than three times.

One of the charges involved a sport team where he coached and became involved with a 15-year-old girl. Driving her to a church "While the vehicle was stopped at a traffic light, the member [Knill] then leaned over, pulled down the front of the student's top and started kissing and licking her left breast", wrote the college in their disciplinary decision, after the student had reported the incident to authorities. Criminally charged with sexual assault and breach of trust, he was found not guilty, was suspended for two months, was required to be assessed by a psychiatrist and to take a boundaries course.

He went on to continue teaching at various schools, the final one from 2004 to 2017. And in June was criminally charged in the sexual exploitation of a 17-year-old girl at the high school he was currently teaching at. Once that charged was announced, another woman brought allegations of sexual misconduct against this serial offender, following decades when she had remained silent about the abuse she had been exposed to.

Back in 2008 a Toronto district teacher, Riaz Khamis, was accused by a group of girls at the high school he taught at of touching them with inappropriate comments. He was transferred to another school in the same board. Five years on he pleaded guilty to allegations of professional misconduct for taking non-consensual photographs of students at the new school, storing them with downloaded images of naked women on a phone which he permitted students access to. When the photos were seen by female students, four reported him to their principal who reported to the disciplinary committee of the Teachers' college. This man now teaches at Scarborough's Woburn Collegiate Institute in the same school board.

Francesco Ciraco of Toronto's Catholic board in 2009 assaulted a teaching colleague inside the school elevator. Alone inside the elevator together, he kissed the woman, cupped her breast, squeezed her buttocks, kissed the exposed part of her breast. She shoved him away from her. He was transferred to a new school. Charged criminally, he was found guilty, requested a retrial and was once again found guilty. Despite which he received an absolute discharge. Having served a period of probation, the college found him guilty of professional misconduct suspending him for six months.

He is employed still as a teacher at Our Lady of the Assumption in North Toronto. The legislation meant to prevent students from being abused by teachers, Bill 37, the Protecting Students Act, under which there is no requirement for teachers to have their licenses automatically revoked by the college other than for cases of sexual abuse against their students which includes intercourse, masturbation, child pornography of genital-to-genital, genital-to-oral, anal-to-genital, and oral-to-anal contacts. Outside of these gross infractions, there is no provincial requirement for a teaching license to be revoked.

Crime and Punishment : Victims of Incest

"It's a relief. I am very satisfied with the number of years that I think is appropriate for what we endured."
"As long as he's alive, he'll be in the registry as a sexual predator. That's what he is, a sexual predator." 
Nathalie Lesage, 49, Gatineau, Quebec courtroom

"Reassertion of control can be very important to women who have been raped. They're [the three daughters of Jacques Lesage, Val-des-Monts, Quebec] ensuring that their father can't disappear into anonymity, and that he will be named and exposed."
Elizabeth Sheehy, law professor, University of Ottawa

"We've turned a page/"
"Don't hesitate. Don't hesitate to denounce those who are trying to keep [their abuse] a secret."
Lucie Lesage, 53, Gatineau, Quebec courtroom

Lucie and Nathalie Lesage speak to reporters after their father was sentenced to 15 years in prison. (Amanda Pfeffer/CBC)

Justice, according to three sisters who were mercilessly set upon by their father when they were children, has finally been done. But after all the years of their lives living with the bitter memories and the vicious harm the man who is their father imposed upon them as he victimized them by viewing his daughters as  his sexual prey, it might seem to come as a hollow victory. Their lives were destroyed; they had no normal childhood and their adulthood was fraught with misery.

A week ago a jury convicted 79-year-old Jacques Lesage of three counts of incest and one of indecent assault. And then days later, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. For the unspeakable crimes of raping children. Children who had every reason to trust their father to protect them from the evils that the world sometimes visits on children. From time to time society is made aware that children are horribly abused by those they are most dependent on for emotional support and love.

This case of a man selecting his children for sexual gratification before they were ten years of age, impregnating one for the first time at age 13, then following that pregnancy up with another two resulting from violently forced sex, is unusual in the severity of its degrading wretchedness. Three little girls in one family living in fear of their father's constant predations on them; how much more vulnerable can children be?

His sentence is said to reflect the crime in its severity. And perhaps given his age, it might be considered so. Yet he ravaged three lives and those decades of loss cannot be retrieved. In his own defence at his sentencing hearing he sought compassion by claiming to have been a victim of incest himself; that a sister was also his mother. Would that normalize what he did to his children in any rational mind?

He married he said, at age 16 because his wife, at 13, was being sexually abused by her father, and he had a wish to rescue her. Obviously then, he was well aware that incest and sexual abuse are horrendous crimes against the innocent. Yet knowing that, he embarked on his own journey of imposing fear and pain on his children.Seeking to elicit sympathy for his spectacular failure as a human being?

He fathered eight children. He spoke of the abuse meted out by his father, and from brothers at a Catholic orphanage, as though his experiences should be viewed as a reasonable explanation for his own horrible lapse at humanity in his relationship with his dependent children. But just in case his experience as a child himself did not melt the hard hearts sitting in judgement of him as a disgustingly blemished human being he divulged that he had cancer and to halt the spread of the cancer had his genitals removed.

Nathalie Lesage had testified that she was five years of age when her father began molesting her. That molestation culminated in the first rape attack by her father when she turned eight. Which was followed by a childhood of never-ending panic resulting in an adult who felt her life was hell, leaving her with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

A third daughter, Chantal Knippenburg, 45 gave evidence against her father, but the judge acquitted the man of sexual assault and indecent assault in her instance. He is yet to be tried on one count of sexual assault and one count of sexual interference relating to an 11-year-old girl, in 2001. The daughters took steps to publicly reveal their names to ensure that in turn their father's name would be publicly revealed so he would not remain an anonymous offender.

And while prosecutors had preferred a sentence of between 20 to 22 years in prison, lawyer for the defence Antonio Cabral argued for a prison term of no more than five to seven years. But Quebec Superior Court Justice Michel Pennou felt it necessary to impose a sentence reflecting the serious nature of this man's crimes.

The lengthy prison term is lessened given credit for time served prior to trial. Should he live that long, he will serve 11 years and 8 months in prison. Jacques Lesage has been in prison since 2014, when his daughter Lucie went to police to report her father's criminal past. She did so just after her mother died. 

Mucking Things Up

"I must say in those days, if a priest denied such activity [child molestation], I was very strongly inclined to accept the denial."
"[The Church] mucked things up and let people down. [Its response was] indefensible."
Cardinal George Pell, Vatican finance minister

Senior Counsel Assisting Gail Furness stands in front of a screen displaying Australian Cardinal George Pell as he holds a bible while appearing via video link from a hotel in Rome, Italy to testify at the Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child...Reuters/Jeremy Piper-Oculi/Handout via Reuters

"[One abusive priest] would have been prosecuted and convicted except that the bishop intervened and he was sent to Michigan for treatment and then placed in another parish upon his return."
Pennsylvania grand jury

"Someone recently shared the expression, 'When you know more, you can do more'. With the grand jury report, we know more, and we will do more [to address the issue of priests preying on children]."
Altoona-Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Bishop Mark Bartchak

It never goes away. The horrendous scandal of priests molesting children who trusted them as God's representatives on Earth, just keeps repeating itself time and again, moving from one geographic area to another as abused children now adults, living with their agony in silence now feel empowered by previous revelations leading to investigations and public disclosure has given them confidence to relieve themselves of the misery they have long lived with silently.

Australia has been rocked to its core by the launching of charges of abuse by dozens of victims whom fourteen priests from the diocese in Ballarat, near Melbourne, from the 1960s to the 1990s assaulted as the story continues to reveal the wretchedness of humanity. As many as five priests at one time in that history preyed on children. In commenting on the testimony, Cardinal George Pell one of the Vatican's most influential figures, murmurs "disastrous coincidence."

It certainly was for some of those involved several of whom committed suicide. Father Gerald Ridsdale stands out as one of the worst offenders. He has been accused of over one hundred instances of abuse. Not even his own nephew was spared. And, as it happens, Cardinal Pell shared living quaerters with this man in their early years as priests. In retrospect, he says thoughtfully, he had noticed nothing unusual.

Cardinal Pell back then served as a consultant to Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns. Father Ridsdale was an irritant, a problem that Bishop Mulkearns neatly solved by moving him for years between parishes. But Cardinal Pell had no knowledge about the abuse that ran rampant through the ranks, even as he rose to attain the Archbishopric of Melbourne, and later Sydney.

Inconveniently Father Ridsdale's nephew recounts a conversation with Cardinal Pell who once said to him: "I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet", an remembrance that the good Cardinal denies. Cardinal Pell is elderly now, and in poor health. The Vatican is concerned for his health. He testified via video link from Rome, at the Australian hearing.

And so, Australians went to the trouble to raise $200,000 to enable fourteen victims to travel to Rome to face Cardinal Pell. Who then admitted he had done too little, as in nothing-at-all, to counter the abuse he had no knowledge of, that he had paid too little attention to accusations, and was willingly relieved to turn a deaf ear to. Hear no evil has its value' no knowledge, no action required.

That's what is happening in Australia, while in Pennsylvania two Catholic bishops have been revealed to have given assistance in shielding the abuse of hundreds of children at the hands of over 50 priests over a 40-year time-span. The grand jury report based its evidence partially on diocesan archives kept secret, but uncovered through the auspices of a search warrant.

Those archives validated the suspicion that this diocese had acted just as others all over the world had seen fit to do; 'trouble' priests were simply shunted about from one parish to another. They were never to be prosecuted. The dignity of the church would be impaired. One of the priests had been convicted of forcing sex on orphans during mission trips to Honduras.

The documents in question included a "payout chart": $10,000 to $25,000 to victims who were fondled while clothed; $15,000 to $40,000 to boys who had been fondled underneath clothing, or had been subjected to masturbation; $25,000 to $75,000 for those unfortunates subjected to oral sex; and $50,000 to $175,000 allotted to those who were subjected to intercourse.

Testimonials of Rage

"We've been hoping for this day. Actually we were hoping he would go to jail first."
"He tormented many, many, many boys in Mount Albert. Unbelievable what one powerful individual can do."
"He was my father's best friend. His children, his three sons, were the best friends of my three youngest brothers."
"The community has rallied around Owen and not my brothers. We would go out to the courthouse and he would have two rows of supporters."
Barb Willitts, Mount Albert, Ontario

"I did everything I could to avoid being alone with the man. The number of times he groped me in church, in my parents' back room...."
"He didn't miss many boys in Mount Albert. I've had calls from some men who said, 'Thanks so much for coming forward, but I couldn't do it'."
Robert Willitts, Selkirk, Manitoba

"He was the only doctor in town. We would trust him as well as you would trust your very closest friend. I'm a registered nurse, so I've seen a bit of life, but I never thought I would have to deal with anything like this. There's been a lot of anger involved."
"I just feel sorry for the family and we're just sorry this ever happened."
Jean Willitts, mother of Barb and Robert, Mount Albert, Ontario

RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO   Dr. John Owen Slingerland, shown in February 2013, has been found guilty of assaulting young boys between 1959 and 1970.

The Willitts family's most valued friend was one of the most prominent citizens of the town. He was the town doctor. He was a loyal member of the local United Church. John Owen Slingerland was also a scout leader. Eventually his prominence and his professional capacity led to his becoming the chief medical officer of York Region. Professional prestige, social standing, community respect, he had it all. He also had a family, and was father to three children of his own.

In 2013 he was sentenced to two years in prison on four counts of indecent assault, a charge and a conviction reflecting his penchant for pedophilia. The incidents that led to the charges took place between 1959 and 1970. As so often happens, very young boys who are sexually molested suffer in silence, tell no one, and in their later years, having mused on and resented their loss of childhood, take steps to have their tormentor see justice.

John Owen Slingerland maintained that he was innocent of all charges laid against him. He had appealed his conviction and the verdict, and while his appeal was working its way through the court system he spent no time behind bars. But over the weekend news of his death at 92, was revealed. He had been suffering from heart problems. A man with a distinguished lifetime career had during that lifetime preyed on young boys.

Robert Willitts was five years old when Dr. Slingerland first began molesting him. Apart from Robert Willitts and his brother, another three men came forward with similar claims. Robert is now 56 years old, living in Manitoba, and owns a Canadian Tire store there. Other victims of Dr. Slingerland are now in their maturing years as well. It is understood that not all the victims of this man sought to reveal their childhood experience through a misguided sense of shame, or a wish not to recall their suffering.

Another Willitts sibling, Will, spoke during the trial about the man whose professional and social standing in the town gave him the opportunity to molest young boys, with total impunity. Even now, his reputation was such after so many years, that the town stood behind him, supporting the man who had been the only town doctor for decades, a man respected in his church and his profession.

"He got away with what he wanted to. He was the top dog in a farming community. He was the best-educated man, he was the pillar of society", said Will Willitts, now a journalist living in Sydney, Australia. He, like his sister Barb, said he was "relieved" at news of the man's death. "He's been controlling my life since he abused me at 5 years old", said Will Willitts. "He robbed me of my boyhood."

Social and Religious Culture at Loggerheads?

"The physical and psychological impact of forcing this young girl to continue with an unwanted pregnancy is tantamount to torture."
"The Paraguayan authorities cannot sit idly by while this young rape-survivor is forced to endure more agony and torment."
Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty International

"This girl became a uterus. She became a birth canal."
Esperanzaq Martinez, former Paraguayan health minister

"The country is divided in two."
"Some want to legalize abortion, the killing of an innocent who still is in a period of gestation. And for the other side, those who oppose that idea."
Msgr. Claudio Giminez, Paraguayan Roman Catholic cleric

"The pregnancy will not be interrupted. We've already completely ruled out abortion."
"The Justice Department will determine later who will have custody of the mother and child [after the birth]."
Antonio Barrios, Paraguayan health minister

The case has sparked outrage in Paraguay and abroad

A child of ten. Unspeakably shameful. An anomaly, that some twisted psychopath chose to rape a ten year-old little girl? Obviously. What kind of corrupted mind would even begin to think of such a fundamentally loathsome thing? But, this is Paraguay where some 700 girls between ten and 14 years of age gave birth last year. In this country of 6.8 million people evidently gross indecency is not all that uncommon.

And so the country is locked in a moral disagreement of monumental proportions; one segment of the population, horrified by the ramifications of a ten year old child having been raped, become pregnant and having to undergo the trials of pregnancy and childbirth. A child herself giving birth to a child; if that is, she survives. Those who want to put an end to this child's nightmare insist that an abortion is required.

A staunchly Roman Catholic country, its religious morals mitigate against abortion for any reason other than to save the life of the mother, and since there are no guarantees that this child will be able to give birth without sustaining grave physical injury to herself, let alone survive the occurrence, the Church feels that to destroy the fetus is itself unthinkable and contrary to their religious commitment to preserve life.

The 10-year-old is staying at a Red Cross hospital in Asuncíon. Photograph: Norberto Duarte/AFP/Getty Images

A medical panel established to assess the child's mental and physical health felt that the ten-year-old is not prepared either mentally or physically to give birth. "That's why when her baby arrives, the justice system will have to set a guardian and tutors for both of them", advised Jose Orue, a prosecutor with jurisdiction in the city of Luque, located near the capital city of Asuncion.

Franca La Carrubba, a forensic psychologist, feels that with proper medical care the child might survive the physical part of the birth. "The aftermath of rape could remain when she becomes a teenager or an adult. It's the most common disorder in these cases." Twenty-eight minors died in Paraguay last year as a result of complications during childbirth. Another fourteen died of botched abortions.

The little girl's mother took her to hospital on April 21, ostensibly suffering from abdominal pains. Her mother is said to have imagined the child might have a tumour. A medical examination revealed the girl was in her 22nd week of pregnancy. Whereupon the mother informed authorities that her daughter must have been raped by her husband, the child's stepfather.

Gilberto Benitez, 42, was nowhere to be found, and a manhunt was launched for him. And the little girls' mother demanded an abortion for her daughter. In response the authorities have refused, insisting that a girl in good health could safely give birth; that a late-term abortion would itself be a risky undertaking. In a country where abortions are anathema to god.

"I will do any (paternity) test to show it wasn't me", insisted Gilberto Benitez, whom authorities managed to finally apprehend. "I've been with tons of women, and I never got anybody pregnant", he said. He didn't say, unfortunately, that he would never have stooped so low as to rape a child. But of course, his insistence on his innocence does require that a genetic test be performed.

Not that the results would un-impregnate a ten-year-old girl. Let alone make her experience of having been raped disappear.

As though that isn't sufficiently sad and sordid in and of itself, the mother of the girl is also now in prison, having been accused of enabling her daughter's abuse, as is the girl's stepfather, accused of raping the child.

Should the birth proceed as it appears it will, both the ten-year-old and the ensuing child born of rape will become wards of the state.

Lives Lost and Found

"There's not a lot of good in his life. It's his own fault, but sometimes I think he's as stuck in this house as we are. He and his ex split years ago, he hates his job, and he's going to prison forever if the police find out what he's done to us. Now he's sitting here holding this beautiful baby who is nothing but pure goodness and he's happy. I think she gives him new meaning in his life."
Amanda Berry, abduction victim

Gina DeJesus, left, Amanda Berry, right; as teens, as adults, their captor, Ariel Castro centre

The world was aghast to discover that an American man had concealed in his modest house located on a lower-middle class neighbourhood street in Cleveland, the presence of three young women who he had kept shackled and abused as sex slaves for ten years of their lives. None of the people living in neighbouring houses had any idea that the 50-year-old school bus driver, the father himself of a young girl, had been keeping three helpless women from pursuing their lives.

Abducted in their teen-age years, kept as prisoners, repeatedly raped, they remained hopeful even while suffering the agony of knowing their families were desperate to find them, just as they were frantic to escape the fate that had befallen them. For ten years they suffered that horrendous state of helplessness, kept in chains, and with no recourse from constant ravaging by the man who enjoyed inflicting pain and misery on three vulnerable young women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

Their agony at their dreadful plight cannot even be imagined in its full emotional turmoil and the physical degradation that was forced upon them time after time. Until finally, the captives managed to escape when Amanda Berry one day in May two years ago kicked out the front door of the house, and made use of a neighbour's telephone to call 911, shouting into the receiver: "Help me! I'm Amanda Berry!" By this time she knew her mother had died, while mourning the inexplicable loss of her daughter.

AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File    In this Wednesday, May 8, 2013 file photo, a missing poster still rests on a tree outside the home of Amanda Berry, in Cleveland.

By this time as well, the woman who had been placed in miserably degrading captivity for ten long agonizing years, was a mother of a seven-year-old little girl, who shared life as a captive with the three women who were the tortured sex slaves of the man who had become her biological father. A man whom her mother, in a newly-published memoir describes as being a loving father to the child, and who died by his own hand while in prison. That child will eventually be informed of the background of her birth.

That she was the product of rape, that her mother and the other two young women imprisoned with her mother were criminally repeatedly abused by a man whose biological offspring she had become. She will have to measure that knowledge with the emotions she may have felt in reciprocating the love that this man gave her as his child, even while his brutally odious treatment of her mother and the other women continued. It will take a strong will to interpret and balance her reaction.

But judging from her mother's recovery from the ordeal she shared with the two other women whom this man horribly victimized, she will manage her emotions to her credit as a strong-willed individual. Her mother has shown great forbearance, an amazing capacity to humanize the man whose conduct was so bestially disgusting, uncaring of the pain he inflicted on helpless women whose ruined lives he had no compunction in claiming credit for.

In the end, that ruination was temporary. And in Amanda Berry's case in particular, enough compassion was possible as a result of her stalwart inner character, to view the man who had wronged her so deeply, physically and mentally, as a vulnerable human being himself. He presented to the world as a man of no human virtue whatever, whose conscience was completely dysfunctional, a psychopath whose destructive imposition on others was utterly damning.

But the capacity of the three women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, to rise beyond the humiliation, pain and misery that they suffered and to manage somehow, through the inner strength and determination they are obviously imbued with, to get on with their lives, to reach toward the aspiration to live as they were meant to, remains an inspiration to anyone whom life has delivered great suffering to.

AP Photo/Hennes Paynter Communications, File   This combo image made from July 8, 2013, file still frames from video provided by Hennes Paynter Communications shows, from left: Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, the three women held captive in a Cleveland home for a decade by Ariel Castro.

Two-Plus-Two Equal-Four

"The most startling finding is the dramatic increase in hospital admission for self-harm among our young people."
"We knew from previous studies that this type of behaviour is there, but just seeing the numbers and the upward trend is particularly distressing."
Juliana Wu, manager, decision support and trauma registries Canadian Institute for Health Information

The Twins. Courtesy Jonathan Hobin

"It certainly confirms our experience as care providers across North America. In the last three to five years there's really been a surge in kids who are self-harming, particularly the girls."
"What we hear from the kids is that they're having a really hard time dealing with negative emotions or stress and that cutting or hurting themselves reduces that. They really have trouble handling negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger or despair. It just bubbles up inside them ... and they have not developed the coping strategies to deal with them."
"You will see kids whose arms look like railway tracks or have done a very deep cut or in a serious place. The question then is, why are these kids not picking up better ways to reduce stress?"
"With social media, kids are essentially always with their peers. And if their peers are abusive -- as they often are -- then they are constantly exposed to an environment in which they are being taught maladapted techniques. In many ways, they are being raised by their peers."
"Many things have changed in our society over the last ten or 12 years and now it's starting to catch up. We've all heard that 'it takes a village to raise a child' -- well the village is changing rapidly."
"The culture is allowing girls to be in more fights. We're living in a more violent society. But I would say that all bets are off. We just don't know about this group of kids. This is a different phenomena."
Dr. Kathleen Pager, head of psychiatry, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario

It's an unfortunate fact of life that there have always been neglected children, children left to their own devices, to try to figure out on their own, through observation and experience, how they will fit into the world around them. Needless to say it's the parents' responsibility when they have children to raise them in an emotionally supporting familial environment, giving them confidence, and endowing them with values that will sustain them throughout their lives.

That's the best-case scenario for child-raising, along with the provision of shelter, nutrition and exposure to learning experiences, including schooling. Part of that support comes from the state as well, in reliable access to health care when it is required, and academic opportunities to equip the young with knowledge and social skills. When these are lacking the fallout is confusion, sometimes resentment, and sometimes social aversion.

Perhaps it's a bit too smug to offer the opinion that when children come into the world those who bring them there have an obligation to prepare them for entry to the world around them. And in raising children nothing can be more important and vital to their well-being than emotional stability, support, understanding and encouragement at every step of the way, as well as discipline in the imparting of values.

In modern society much of that obligation fell to the mother, with the father's support. Usually one of the parents was always available at home busy with domestic duties, the most vital of which was the raising of children. When a cadre of women in the West decided that this convention was demeaning to a women's independence, leaving her a virtual slave to the wage-earner to whom she was linked, and by extension the children to whom she was intrinsically obligated, changes occurred.

Dignity and fulfillment were seen to be had in working outside the home, for a salary. When children were involved, as they invariably were, the search was on for someone, not the parents, to take the parents' children in hand in a 'minding' capacity and something elemental was irretrievably lost. The concern deeply held by parents in the well-being of their offspring had been off-loaded and contracted out to someone who had no such concerns.

Left adrift, but clinging to the 'quality time' that parents could manage to spare for their children in off-work hours, the consequences could very well have led to a basic insecurity in their children. Little wonder that an evolution occurred where peers took the place of adults in forming children's values and attitudes toward life. And perhaps for far too many a permanent anomie set in to plague a child's psyche.

That, and abuse of any kind that might be perpetrated and perpetuated in a less-than-ideal familial setting. Resulting in findings that conclude that self-harm accounts for over 80 percent of intentional injuries and such self-harm has increased by over 85 percent in recent years, and girls account for 80 percent of the young admitted to hospital for self-harm injury. Poisoning by alcohol, prescription and non-prescription drugs represents the most common self-harm administered by both boys and girls.

"When you work in this area [helping vulnerable children and youth] the thing that strikes you is how common it is. It is children from Vanier, Barrhaven, Kanata, Orleans and outlying areas [within the greater Ottawa area]. It is everywhere."
"I think people think this is a problem for those families or those children who are not in their demographic or their neighbourhood and that is just not the case."
"Some are affected by poverty, mental health issues and addictions, and some are not."
"People recognize the physical issues and don't recognize the mental health issues, particularly in young children."
Dr. Michelle Ward, head, Child and Youth Protection Clinic, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario

An estimated two percent of children in the greater Ottawa area with its million-plus population has experienced some manner of childhood trauma or abuse. Doctors at CHEO saw only those children requiring hospitalization or emergency care, resulting from abuse or neglect, in the past. Many high-risk children were left untreated for issues that could impede their growth and development.

A new clinic has opened at CHEO, headed by an expert in child maltreatment. Children are identified by the Children's Aid Society and often become their wards and are referred to CHEO for treatment. From all across the city they are seen at the clinic, from toddlers to teens, to be assessed for physical, psychological neglect, and for sexual abuse. The function of the clinic is to provide early, comprehensive, expert assistance in the treatment of issues of abuse and neglect.

At the same time, children can be screened for medical, developmental and behavioural concerns which might be associated with trauma and if left unchecked could escalate, leaving them incapable of leading a well balanced life in the future. Physicians proactively assess children and youth in need of intervention and treatment.

Britain's Shameful Conscience

"There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as eleven were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators."
"The collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham."
"Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."
Alexis Jay, author, independent report

"Cultural sensitivities should never stand in the way of protecting children."
"It is hard to imagine the damage caused to victims who were preyed upon with almost impunity over many years, because of a reluctance to comprehend or address what was widely happening."
John Cameron, head of helpline, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

"[Rotherham victims: They were the ones with troubled family backgrounds, with] a history of domestic violence, parental addiction, and in some cases serious mental health problems. A significant number of the victims had a history of child neglect and/or sexual abuse when they were younger. Some had a desperate need for attention and affection. [A third were already known to social services because of child protection and child neglect, domestic violence and school truancy.]"

"I didn't want the story to be true because it made me deeply uncomfortable. [However] I could not escape a nagging feeling that I hadn't done my job properly [in 2003 in Leeds; stories of young teenage girls targeted by 'Asian men']. I'd looked the other way rather than sought to establish the truth."
"[His conscience nagged by 'strikingly similar' stories from towns and cities across northern England and the Midlands]. It was always more than one man in the dock. And it was hard not to notice that ... the convicted men in each case had something else in common. They invariably had Muslim names."
Andrew Norfolk, reporter, The Times

The report found 1400 children were abused in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013. Photo: Getty Images

What was widely happening was the gross sexual and violent abuse of defenseless children by predators whose success in their venture went unopposed, leaving them with the correct impression that because they were of Pakistani origin no one would dare confront them for fear of social backlash in a country that has become too 'liberal' in its multicultural consciousness to 'stand in judgement' of violent crime committed by minorities.

Rotherham, a borough of 250,000 people, sits in England's industrial north. Photo: Getty Images

And not just any minorities, but those of southeast Asian descent, Muslims whose takeover of parts of Great Britain is so complete that their cultural heritage predominates leaving them to feel quite at home in their demands for Sharia law and unquestioning surrender to their very particular entitlements. So the "collective failures" by authorities over a period of sixteen years to protect children from the gang violence and sexual predation of criminals was left unchecked.

This, even while in some media reports were being circulated of these despicable crimes against children and no one in authority appeared ever to take notice. Not that the abused children and their frightened families never complained to authorities. More that those in public office chose not to react in fear of exposing themselves to charges of racism.

Those accusations seemingly more to be avoided than to act in defence of the defenceless. Britain does have a well-earned reputation for the lax manner in which it chooses to give safe haven to child predators ranging from public figures to these gangs.

Ms. Jay, formerly chief social work advisor to the government of Scotland, informed the British Broadcasting System that she was "very shocked" by what was revealed to her when she investigated what had been happening in Rotherham. From her understanding that police "regarded many child victims with contempt", to the first of the reports being "effectively suppressed" because senior officers chose not to place any trust in the data.

So, in a town of some 250,000 individuals as many as 1,400 children were beaten, raped and trafficked between 1997 and 2013. Blame points directly now to mostly British Pakistanis who trafficked children to other towns and cities in northern England; the children abducted, beaten and completely intimidated. Five men were jailed in 2010 convicted of grooming teens for sex. And from that time forward the full spectrum of the sex trade in young children was finally revealed.

Implicating Pakistani criminal rings plying their trade in Rochdale, Derby and Oxford, as well as the now-infamous Rotherham, England.

Nowhere To Run To

"[When a high-risk sex offender is released from prison] society becomes a sitting duck. What we need is a systemic way of dealing with the issue so the community doesn't have to take it on."
"I believe in the law, so any form of activity that is not regulated is wrong, but for those raising children ... having access to information, to me, that is just a basic right."
"Given their crimes, I believe they have lost the right to anonymity. Do you not have the right to know who you're sending your kids to at Halloween?"
Rosalind Prober, president, advocacy group Beyond Borders ECPAT

"What purpose can there be to this legislation [Conservative government tough new legislation to establish publicly accessible database of high-risk child sex offenders] other than to further vilify child sex offenders, encourage vigilante justice and further drive them underground?"
Stephen Hebscher, Toronto criminal lawyer

"Hurt my kid and I'll bury you where they'll never find the body."
"Pedophile you came to the wrong neighbourhood."
"Hurt a kid ... deal with us."
"...willing to jump into action to protect abused kids 24/7."
Urban Bulldogs Against Kid Abuse [patch-wearing bikers]

Screengrab / ubaka.org   The homepage for Urban Bikers Against Kids Abuse.

"[It's] incredibly concerning [that people who go through the judicial system continue to offend]."
"That means we are dealing with a population of people that have come through a system that hasn't held them accountable. The system is under resourced, we still have judges and justices who don't understand what sex offenders are capable of ... you have people out on the streets who have not undergone counselling ... it's problematic, they come out the other end with very little intervention."
Danielle Aubry, Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse

"Maybe they (police) are watching him, [released-to-the-community sex offender Terrance Leger, 54] but it doesn't seem like it. We've seen kids in his yard, seen him hanging around an ice-cream parlour talking to children. ... People feel helpless."
Grandmother Lynn Hutchinson

"We had conditions put on him when he was released. He has a curfew and is not supposed to be around children. If people see that, they need to bring it to our attention. We will act on reports."
"If it's just about monitoring as a community, that's OK, but if there's false information, harassment ... that's not helpful. People need to understand they (sex offenders) have met their custodial obligation and are free members of society with the same rights as others ... they deserve not to be harassed and targeted by people."
RCMP officer Sgt.Dale Morgan

Police, social workers, much of the general public, criminal lawyers, have a perfect right to believe and support the theory that child-sex offenders having been charged for their crimes, judged and imprisoned, and thereafter have a perfect right to take their lawful place in society once they have discharged their obligation to justice by serving the time allotted to them as punishment for their crimes. Parents of vulnerable young children think differently; that their moral right to live alongside families with children will never be rehabilitated.

In July, after five years in prison, 35-year-old child-predator, sexual offender, and violent criminal Keith Constantin, convicted of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old boy, and a 45-year-old blind woman among other crimes, had his face and crimes placed on posters on every available space in the Gage Park area of Hamilton Ontario. Hamilton Police had warned that he represented a danger to reoffend.The backlash to his presence led by several hundred raging mothers unnerved this man to the extent that he broke his curfew and was taken back into police custody.

He was hounded out of the Gage Park area, then he settled into the nearby Hamilton suburb of Stoney Creek and the same reception met his presence. A mother of four young children set up a Facebook page, and residents printed and distributed posters along with an online petition that read: "Stop the government from allowing him to live in our city" that bore several thousand signatures. The man now faces a possibility of an additional two years in prison for breaching his curfew. Should he return to those communities afterward, he will face a similar reaction.

And then there is Terrance Leger, 54, who had been actively engaged in abusing young boys in the rural community of Collina, where locals held meetings, exchanged posters, drew up petitions and pressured the landlord who owned the house Mr. Leger was renting. Add to that Dave Mantin, director of the Sexual Abuse Network of Canada, living in Saint John, who managed and led the campaign. Mr. Mantin operates a support and advocacy network with cross-Canada reach.

Keith Minchin for National Post   Dave Mantin, Director with the Sexual Abuse Network of Canada, delivers flyers near his home in Saint John N.B.

He also maintains a public listing of sex offenders based on media reports, and uses private Facebook groups to keep tabs on convicted or suspected pedophiles, working entirely "within the law" to monitor and bring the concerns of neighbourhoods to the attention of police. Mr. Leger also was pressured out of Collina in a few months' time, leading him to move up to the road to Penobsquis, 20 kilometres away where Lynn Hutchinson is his neighbour.

She began driving by his house, beeping her horn to harass him after she had spotted him in her backyard one night. He threatened to call the police. Rosalind Prober of Beyond Borders ECPAT finds such tactics unuseful, but she knows the wellspring of fear and loathing from whence they arise, largely a feeling of powerlessness while a threat lurks in the community. Currently, the national sex offender registry available only to the RCMP, has 33,000 names, two-thirds of which represent people convicted of sex crimes against children.

That database will become public when the new legislation to establish a publicly accessible database of high-risk child sex offenders passes as it is expected to. In Penticton, British Columbia, Cpl. Martin Trudeau of the local police force is concerned of news of a new biker group promising to "work in conjunction" with authorities. The biker group explain they aren't vigilantes, but their promotion video's use of graphic images and threatening slogans leave an indelible impression that they are prepared to become just that.

Sexual violence against children represented one of the only violent crime categories to be on the rise when Police reported 4,232 such crimes against children in 2013, a notable increase from 2012 when there were 3,900 crimes reported. Yet Danielle Aubry at Calgary Communities Against Sexual abuse speaks of those figures as the tip of the iceberg, that such crimes are under-reported. Leaving society with quite a problem to be solved in some manner which at the present time escapes everyone, authorities and neighbourhoods alike.

India six-year-old 'raped in Bangalore school by staff members' 

BBC News online -- 17 July 2014

This is the latest in a series of sexual assault cases that have made headlines in India

A six-year-old schoolgirl has allegedly been raped by two staff members at a prominent school in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, police say.

The alleged assault happened on 2 July but her parents discovered it only a few days ago after she complained of stomach ache and was taken to hospital.

Meanwhile, hundreds of parents have protested outside the school, pulling down its gates and shouting slogans.
Police have registered a case, but they are yet to make any arrests.

The BBC's Andrew North in Delhi says it's the latest in a series of sexual assault cases that have made headlines in India.

Figures show more rapes are being reported in general, which is a sign that the crime is being taken more seriously, our correspondent reports. But India's sluggish judicial system means it can take years for victims to get justice.

New Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised a zero tolerance approach on crimes against women, but violence and discrimination against women remain deeply entrenched in society.

The girl was allegedly raped by a security guard and a gym teacher, but as there are multiple guards and gym instructors in the school, police say they are trying to identify the guilty, BBC Hindi's Imran Qureshi reports from Bangalore.

As news of the incident became public, hundreds of parents gathered outside the school, protesting against the alleged insensitivity of the school management.

"They have handled it very shoddily," said Vivek Sharma, parent of a boy studying in the school.
On Thursday, school chairman Rustom Kerawala addressed a meeting of the parents where he offered his "sincere apologies" and promised "full co-operation" with the police investigation.

Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus.

The brutal crime led to massive outrage in the country and forced the government to introduce tougher anti-rape laws, including the death penalty in rare cases.

But the law appears to have failed to act as a deterrent. Statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau for 2013 show one rape was reported every 21 minutes.

Remorse After The Fact

"Three things need to happen -- robust enquiries that get to the truth, police investigations that pursue the guilty and find out what has happened and proper lessons learned so we make sure these things will not happen again."
British Prime Minister David Cameron

British home secretary Theresa May has announced a sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse, following widespread concern sex assaults by celebrities including as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain-to-hold-major-new-probe-into-child-sex-abuse-30413253.html#sthash.tHgbxBaT.dpuf

"The government will be establishing an independent panel with expertise in the law on child protection to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their responsibilities to protect children from sex abuse."
"It is my intention that people should be able to speak openly in relation to the evidence that they give if they are called as witnesses and if they wish to give written evidence."
"I don't want to dictate to the enquiry how they are going to undertake their work but I'm sure the chairman and the panel will need to be alive to the fact that they will have to hear from those who have not felt able to speak out in the past."
Home Office Minister Theresa May

Home Secretary Theresa May said there would be a wide-ranging report into allegations of abuse at all levels of society

The Home Office itself will not be exempt from scrutiny as the chief executive, Peter Wanless, of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is set to lead a review investigating the Home Office handling of historic allegations of child abuse His review, to take eight to ten weeks, will scrutinize the Home Office's investigation with special attention to the manner in which police and prosecutors used information given them once it emerged an internal review started last year was unable to trace 114 files on child abuse held in the Home Office archives.

After the death in 2010 of Liberal Democrat lawmaker Cyril Smith, it was acknowledged by prosecutors that in 1970 eight men had lodged accusations against Mr. Smith of having abused them when they were in their teen years. Mr. Smith was never charged although he should have been, according to prosecutors. When Norman Tebbit, a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s government was asked whether a cover-up by the political establishment could have existed, he responded: "there may well have been".

This focus on the Home Office occurred when the former minister for the Home Office, Leon Brittan, denied being guilty of rape after he had been questioned by police over sexual offences he is alleged to have committed. He had been questioned under caution over an allegation of rape back in 1967, an attack that was said to have taken place at  his London flat. Through his solicitors Mr. Brittan stated: "It is true that I have been questioned by the police about a serious allegation made against me. This allegation is wholly without foundation."

The major inquiry will delve into child sex abuse in all areas of society with the inclusion of what may have taken place soiling the activities of some within political parties, within the sacred precincts of the BBC in churches, hospitals, schools and private companies; an all-encompassing investigative sweep to uncover the sordid and devastating predation on the vulnerable by the entitled. Recent high-profile celebrity sex-assault cases have shone a broad spotlight on a shameful prevalence in some quarters of child predation.

There will be an especial focus on the Home Office, the very government department tasked with oversight of police and prosecutors who received evidence of child abuse relating to political figures over the space of 35 years, and which appears to have protected the evidence to protect the child molesters. With the horrific revelations that Jimmy Savile, a now-dead popular entertainer, one who was knighted by the Queen, was in fact a serial sexual predator whose atrocities went on without stop for five decades, and the revelations of others involved in similar practices, official Britain had to acknowledge it had a problem it must confront.

Prime Minister David Cameron has stated he would ensure that action was taken to "leave no stone unturned"; a useful phrase, given that such slimily malevolent characters are known to lurk under handy boulders; in the earnest search for the truth relating to claims of an established protective shield of child sex abuse dating back to the 1980s. Jimmy Savile, a man widely admired for his putative good works and sterling character, is now known to have assaulted children in hospitals, children's homes, TV studios, and bodies in morgues.

British home secretary Theresa May has announced a sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse, following widespread concern sex assaults by celebrities including as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain-to-hold-major-new-probe-into-child-sex-abuse-30413253.html#sthash.2q7478Pp.dpuf

Jimmy Savile

British home secretary Theresa May has announced a sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse, following widespread concern sex assaults by celebrities including as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images - See more at: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain-to-hold-major-new-probe-into-child-sex-abuse-30413253.html#sthash.2q7478Pp.dpuf

He had an underground reputation, and many people in authority had knowledge of his atrocious behaviour, but they simply shrugged and did nothing under the belief that this was the way things were. The public's disgusted reaction to these appalling revelations has led to the arrests of a number of other celebrities including the imprisonment of others, entertainer Rolf Harris and publicist Max Clifford among them. A general aura of respectability and public acclaim is capable of hiding the most extreme wretchedly human behaviour.

Mr. Brittan, for one, as home secretary between 1983 and 1985, defended his handling of papers entrusted to him and which detail a network of pedophiles in operation around Westminster. In the 19802, he confirmed, he was given files by Geoffrey Dickens, a then-Conservative MP, about child abuse. They are now nowhere to be found in the files of the Home Office. Prime Minister Cameron has ordered a review to discover what had happened to the "dossier" of papers naming high-profile child abusers.

Validation and Campaign

"[My mother] had been so glad that this young chap was caring for me and looking after me and reading me stories. She had felt that I wasn't alone and he was there looking after me."
"I didn't tell my mother until she was in her 80s -- in 1996-1997 -- and she was so upset because she felt she had let me down and she was so hurt and so angry. She was devastated and devastated that she didn't notice anything at the time."
"I came out convinced that what had happened was my fault, that there was something about me that caused it to happen."
"I felt like a very bad person. I completely withdrew in myself. I went back to school and saw some girls laughing in a corner and I thought they were talking about me."
"I was just surviving from day to day, not feeling very good about myself. I never connected it to what happened in my childhood. I felt I was letting down my husband, my son. There were periods when I thought they'd be better off without me. I felt I was making their life miserable."
Marie Collins 66, Dublin, Ireland

Marie Collins     Image: Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland

When Marie Collins was thirteen she was admitted to hospital with a bone infection in her arm. That was in 1960. At that time parents were not permitted to accompany their children in hospital, to comfort them, to comfort themselves, being close to a child undergoing medical treatment. A hospital chaplain offered to take young Marie Collins under his wing. This was Paul McGinnis, just one year out of seminary college. And a pedophile.

Throughout his saintly career he sexually abused and assaulted young girls in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Marie Collins was but one of many, a frightened young girl never before away from her home, from her mother, from all that was familiar and comforting. And there she was, in hospital awaiting treatment, alone in a tiny cubicle, sexually assaulted by a priest. Who not only abused her but took photographs he could later relish, or share among others with similar grotesque morals.

Marie Collins had her medical treatment, returned home confused and fearful and ashamed, convinced she had done something dreadfully wrong to have brought that assault upon herself, but telling no one, because what had happened to her was so bizarre, so painful, so lacking in comprehension for her, she was convinced no one would believe her and she would be ridiculed and isolated. In fact, she was already isolated in her mind, and ridiculed there as well, for being responsible for the degrading, dreadful things that had happened to her.

She lived a life of fearful confusion resulting in hospital stays where doctors prescribed medicine to treat her symptoms without understanding their cause, for she said nothing about the cause. She suffered agoraphobia, never wanting to leave her house, and her life became, she said, a joyless and dark existence. Finally, nearly 40 years later, when the priest who had abused her was jailed in 1997 she received sex-abuse victim counselling and her life changed.

She was transformed into a tireless campaigner for the rights of victims of abuse, challenging the "lies and hypocrisy" that met her within the Catholic Church. In the doing of which she helped bring into being a state commission in Ireland that went about investigating sexual abuse by the Dublin Catholic Church. Before then, she had spoken in 1985 to a psychoanalyst about what she had suffered. And he advised her to report her experience directly to the church. She did that. Her own priest's reaction put her back into another ten years of isolation mode.

"He wouldn't take the name of the abuser, he thought it wasn't necessary because it was probably my fault and I could go away, I was now forgiven and I could forget about it. That absolutely destroyed me. I didn't go back and talk to my doctor, in fact, I spoke to no one then for another ten years." But then, in 1995, the headlines were rife with the issue of pedophilic priests, and Marie Collins resolved to act. "This man could still be out there and I needed to do something about it", she said. And he was indeed still out there, in a parish. Arrested finally, he was jailed in 1997.

"I never lost my belief in God, I have always retained that. As far as practising my religion, I have gone through stages where I couldn't walk into a church. The way I have dealt with it in recent times, I look on the institution, the structures, the people, as one thing and the actual belief and faith as quite separate." Marie Collins has been named to Pope Francis' commission on setting sex-abuse policy; one of eight others who will confer and craft the scope of the policy and advise the church on how best to protect children going forward to the future.

"I am going in with my eyes open. I long ago stopped trusting. But if there is sincerity there, and I hope there is, then I will go in and fight for what is needed to protect children in the future. If it turns out to be sham then I personally will have done my best and it is the church who will have to answer for it. I am certainly not going to be intimidated. They all have titles, cardinals and ex-prime ministers and things, but it's far too important to be intimidated by anything like that."

"I simply felt that if they were allowed to get away with the practices they were obviously carrying on at the time -- which was covering up for abusers -- then more children would be hurt in the future. You simply can't let that happen. You have to speak."