A priest in Australia has been charged with hiding child sexual assaults by another priest.
He didn’t just hide them, either, he caned two boys who reported being assaulted.
Father Brennan, 74, was arrested and charged yesterday with two counts of misprision of a felony – failing to disclose a serious crime – relating to alleged child sex offences by defrocked priest John Denham against two boys in the late 1970s.
The offences allegedly occurred at St Pius X, in the Newcastle suburb of Adamstown, where Father Denham was a teacher and Father Brennan was school principal.
In addition Father Brennan, of Toronto, south of Newcastle, was charged with assaulting the two boys by caning them after they allegedly reported being sexually assaulted by Father Denham, 70.
“Compassion is at the heart of every great religion.” Karen Armstrong.
One of the men from the Hunter Valley, who alleged Father Brennan caned him in 1978 after he alleged Father Denham had repeatedly sexually assaulted him at the school, thanked police for a determined investigation.
”If this makes one person stand up and say, ‘This is what happened to me’, then I’ll feel better,” he said.
Another Hunter man, who also alleged Father Brennan caned him after he alleged Father Denham had repeatedly sexually assaulted him at the school, said it was ”great news”.
”I feel better now that I’ve got it off my chest after saying nothing for all these years, but there’s still a dark side of it,” he said.
Probably because of the 34 years it took before Pa Brennan was charged.
But, hey, the boys probably seduced Pa Denham. That’s what they do you know.
A Catholic newspaper has removed an interview from their website in which a priest said that pedophiles are seduced by children in “a lot of the cases” and the abusers should not go to jail.
During an interview with National Catholic Register, 78-year-old Father Benedict Groeschel was asked about his experience working with priests involved in abuse.
Mmmmyes, and of course (assuming there is any truth in that, which I haz my doubts) the adult has no responsibility whatever to resist the child’s “seduction.”
You know what’s scary about that?
Groeschel has a PhD in psychology from Columbia University and hosts a television talk show on the Eternal Word Television Network, which also owns National Catholic Register.
That’s what. A PhD in psychology from Columbia.