Fraternity rules
The priest Mafia strikes again.
A priest, originally from County Tyrone and now based in the United States, claims he has been “frozen out” of the Catholic Church after calling the police to investigate a fellow clergyman who had shown child-porn images to 14-year-old parishioner.
Fr John A Gallagher (48), from Strabane, Co Tyrone, is now living in a holiday home belonging to one of his friends and parishioners. He says the locks on his parochial house were changed and he was placed on medical leave by his bishop in the Diocese of Palm Beach, FL. Gallagher says he was told by the Catholic Church to put a pedophile priest on a plane back to India rather than cooperate with the police.
Because priests are above the law, don’t you know, and the church has a special dispensation (granted by itself) to deal with little things like sexual abuse of children itself in house, without any unpleasant intervention by law enforcement.
The incident took place in January 2015. Gallagher, who has remained silent on the matter until now, has written to bishops and cardinals in Ireland and America as well as the Vatican but has been unable to locate the Indian clergyman in question. He said he has not received a satisfactory response from the Catholic Church.
The Belfast Telegraph reports that Fr Jose Palimattom, who had been at the parish of the Holy Name of Jesus Christ in West Palm Beach for just one month, approached a 14-year-old boy after Mass. The priest showed the boy as many as 40 images of naked boys. According to ABC news, the tag words in the images included “little boys,” and “young boys 10-18 yoa.”
…
Police say he was in the first stages of grooming the boy.
The night after Palimattom had shown the young boy the photos he sent him a Facebook message which read “Good night. Sweet dreams.”
The young boy told a friend who reported this to the Church choirmaster, who immediately informed Fr Gallagher.
The Irish priest says that on the night he found out he was told by a Florida Church official, “We need to make him go away, put on a plane.”
The same official also told him not to keep any notes.
Rather than following the Church’s instruction to “make him go away,” Gallagher interviewed Fr Palimattom along with one of his parishioners, a retired police officer. The parishioner took notes at the meeting.
Palimattom admitted to showing nude pictures of boys to the teen. He also admitted that he had sexually assaulted boys in India before arriving in the US. A few hours later he repeated this confession to detectives from the specialist unit of the West Palm Beach Police.
Gallagher contacted the police, following the rules the Catholic Church had set down after hundreds of cases of sexual abuse carried out by the clergy on children.
So that church punished him. The church cares about itself; everyone else can go to hell.
So, punished for actually following the rules?
Strange game. Best strategy is not to play. Like Thermonuclear War. (Ref: War Games, the movie)
Punished for following the secular, human, democratic rules – instead of the theocratic, goddy, priestly rules.
Yes, obviously, but I was going by this statement:
Oh, oops, sorry for underlining the obvious!
I was slightly surprised by that phrase, in fact. They did? Remind us when that was? Have they been following and enforcing those rules? Always, often, sometimes, hardly ever?
Strange game. Like in that cool cartoon, Kelvinball? Well, almost. I rule it was in! :-)
How did Palimattom get back to India? According to the article, he was arrested, changed, bailed, convicted, and then–what?–deported? Released on bail and then hustled out of the country by the church? Now Gallagher is trying to locate Palimattom in India? The article seems vague on this.
I suspect those rules were laid down for the sake of appearance. When it comes time to actually follow them, we see the high-ups continue their usual hush attempts; only a young idealist amongst the clergy, a fresh faced yoof compared to the high-ups, would presume that the church need follow mere earthly rules.
Ophelia: Well, some of the priests obviously are following the rules–witness the one in this story, who really tries to do the right thing, the right way. Sadly, it seems the Church hierarchy is less responsive.