Sexual predators are slipping by our legal system

I see another column about the priests and Catholic school personnel abusing children and how they are getting away with it ["Diocese continues its evasions,"Â Commentary, Feb. 4]. I do not wish to excuse those who perpetrated abuse, but I believe that the focus on them lets a much larger criminal conspiracy off the hook. I am referring to most of the state legislative and judicial systems.

We have known for decades about the devastating effects of the abuse by priests who break the very special bond and the trust they have with their victims and the families.

But I see patients every day who have suffered the devastating effects of childhood abuse from people other than priests. They do not get to sue for millions of dollars. They are stuck with paying for therapy on their own; seeing a priest, minister or lay counselor for therapy; turning to alcohol or drugs to kill the pain; or having anxiety, depression and/ or panic attacks for years or decades, especially when they know that the perpetrator is still on the loose.

In terms of sheer numbers, the state of California alone still protects more sexual predators and tries to keep potential victims from knowing their whereabouts than does the entire Roman Catholic Church worldwide.

We still have laws that ignore the fact that the Roman Catholic Church's attempts at therapy have shown that "therapy" for sexual predators is rarely effective and that they remain lifelong dangers to the community. The Roman Catholic Church was making these attempts at therapy long before the legal system (including legislatures) took sexual abuse seriously.

Indeed, the legal system still does not take it very seriously: in the last year or so we have seen judges in other states sentencing rapists to probation or six months in jail and our own legislators seem more interested in the "rights" of predators than the devastation of their victims, and they cannot be sued. It is quite disgusting.

It would be interesting to go through some of the records of priests discovered by the Roman Catholic Church to have been abusing children in the 1980s and see if, had they been reported to the police, the criminal penalties would have been as hard on them as the penalty imposed by the Roman Catholic Church, such as loss of priestly duties and being sent away for therapy (which was not known to be ineffective back then).

Yes, I know that some were merely transferred, but some non-priest predators also have been given mere slaps on the wrist by civil authorities.

And what was the motive for "protecting" abusive priests?

It seems that in some cases it was merely to protect the Roman Catholic Church from bad press; in others it appears to have been an honest attempt to help a priest who was believed to have been a basically good man – after all, he was a priest – who had done some bad things get back on track.

Some of the really bad predators seem to have become priests merely to get access to children, and I cannot understand why they have not been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church; but then, I am not a Catholic. This seems to be a phenomenon that began in the 1970s at the earliest.

Since society in general was ignorant of the lengths to which sexual predators would go to acquire victims, is it really so hard to believe that it was beyond the imagination of fellow priests that some sexual predators would become priests? Especially since several of these sexual predators were such smooth sociopaths that they were the most beloved by everyone in their parishes, it is quite reasonable to believe that the cover-ups were often done with the best of intentions.

But what are the intentions of our legal system? They are to protect the right of sexual predators to be out in society because they have "paid their debt to society" as prescribed by law, even though that debt is woefully inadequate nonsense in light of the knowledge we have now of the inability of most sexual predators to change and the damage that they cause. To heck with past and future victims.

From what I read, it appears that the Roman Catholic Church has almost completely cleaned up its "problem," certainly more so than society at large has done about non-priest sexual predators. It does not appear unreasonable to let them finish the cleanup without releasing all of the detailed records because the legal system may well not do any better.

Allowing any suspicious information to be given to plaintiff's attorneys is a virtual guarantee of another several hundred thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees, even if there is no further liability.

Again, I do not wish to excuse the actions of abusers or those who, with bad motives, covered up the abuse, but it appears that your columnist Steven Greenhut's concerns in this case are out of proportion when there is a much larger societal problem.