However, the issue is expected to receive considerable attention in the coming days, as Pope Francis arrived this Monday, September 9, in East Timor, the third stage of his major Asian tour.

The 87-year-old pope will visit Dili, the capital of this island nation located between Indonesia and Australia, until the following Wednesday, before heading to Singapore, the final destination of what marks the longest journey of his papacy.

At the heart of these painful cases is notably the one of Bishop Carlos Belo, a hero in the fight for independence who has been accused of sexually abusing underage boys for about 20 years and was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020.

Bishop Belo had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his central role in defending human rights in the country, which became independent in 2002 after over four centuries of Portuguese colonization and twenty-five years of Indonesian occupation.

In 2022, a shocking investigation by a Dutch weekly accused him—supported by testimonies—of abusing and raping young teenagers in the 1980s and 1990s and buying their silence, which forced the Vatican to make public the sanctions it had imposed on the bishop two years earlier.

La Croix conducted an on-site investigation in 2023, revealing the difficulty of breaking the silence surrounding the victims of sexual abuse in this fledgling democracy.

Prison visit

Bishop Belo, now 76, and highly respected by the people of East Timor, resigned from his duties in 2002 citing health reasons and now lives in Portugal.

Despite the serious accusations, he still enjoys broad support among the country's 1.3 million inhabitants, 98% of whom are Catholic.

"We feel like we've lost him. We miss him," said Maria Dadi, president of the East Timor National Youth Council, to Agence France-Presse (AFP), emphasising that "he truly contributed to the fight for East Timor."

In another case, an American priest, Richard Daschbach, was defrocked and found guilty in 2021 of sexually abusing young orphaned and underprivileged girls.

Despite being sentenced to twelve years in prison, he continues to receive support from the upper echelons of society.

In 2023, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao sparked controversy by visiting Daschbach in prison to celebrate his birthday and share a cake with him.

The official papal itinerary does not include any meetings with victims, and the Vatican has not commented on the matter.

However, Francis, who has pledged "zero tolerance" for this scourge since his election in 2013, may address the issue in one of his speeches, which would be considered a strong gesture, or privately meet with victims.

Erased mural

For victim associations in other countries, as they told AFP, the pope must "acknowledge the sexual abuses committed by Church officials" against East Timorese children.

"Those abused by Bishop Belo and other clergy in East Timor will expect a public statement from the pope about the Church's ongoing failure to deal with its problematic clergy," said Tony Gribben, founder of the Dromore Survivors group based in Northern Ireland.

According to Gribben, a meeting would have "limited value" for victims, akin to the apologies offered by Francis during his visit to Ireland in 2018.

"That event was a well-crafted public relations exercise for the Church. But since then, things continue as usual in the Irish Catholic Church," he said.

The U.S. group Bishop Accountability, which documents the Church's abuse crisis, announced that it had written a letter to an influential cardinal asking him to "intervene on behalf of the abandoned Timorese victims" with the pope.

However, for many locals, the issue is not a central one, and many even hoped to see Belo allowed to return to attend the papal visit.

"As a people, we are very saddened by Bishop Belo's absence," said Francisco Amaral da Silva, a 58-year-old academic.

"The government and the Catholic Church should invite him."

Nevertheless, in Dili, there is a palpable discomfort over the idea that his name might be associated with this highly anticipated visit.

Earlier this month, a mural depicting Bishop Belo was painted on a wall beneath a sign welcoming Pope Francis. A few days later, it was erased.

• First published in La Croix International. Republished with permission.

A new UNSW Sydney and Jesuit Social Service study found one in five Australian men admitted having sexual feelings towards children and/or have sexually offended against children.

That statistic shows the necessity of safeguarding children at early childhood education and care services, and places where children gather.

The largest study of its kind ever undertaken globally, the survey looked at two main areas.

One of these examined identifying and understanding child sexual offending behaviour and attitudes among Australian men.

The other measured the prevalence of risk behaviours and attitudes regarding child sexual offending among a representative sample of 1,945 Australian men aged 18 to 65+ years of age.

Worryingly, only a third of those who reported having sexual feelings towards children said they were motivated to access help.

Key findings

Just over 15 per cent of Australian men report sexual feelings towards children

About one in 10 Australian men has sexually offended against children (including technologically facilitated and offline abuse).

Of those men who had sexually offended against children, about half (4.9 percent) reported having sexual feelings towards children. They were more likely than men with no sexual feelings or offending against children to:

• be married, working with children, earning higher incomes
• report anxiety, depression and binge drinking behaviour
• have been sexually abused or had adverse experiences in childhood
• be active online, including on social media, encrypted apps and cryptocurrency
• consume pornography that involves violence or bestiality

New approach

The study report recommends a new approach for measuring and tracking sexual offending and feelings for children. This includes information that can bolster service responses and attitudinal changes that help keep children safe from harm.

"This study brings unprecedented visibility to the numbers of undetected child sex offenders in the Australian community" said lead investigator Associate Professor Michael Salter.

"This study affirms what countless survivors have said - that the men who abused them were well connected and relatively wealthy, and whose behaviour is secretive and easily overlooked.

"By shining a light on the characteristics of individual perpetrators and the broader social and technological patterns that enable their abuse, it is our hope that this research can be the catalyst for change to ultimately keep children safe."

Key recommendations

Preventing child sexual abuse is essential, the report says.

It calls on government and the private sector to invest in ways to address risk factors contributing to sexual offending and reoffending, including:

Safeguarding children in "risky" environments - eg schools, day-care, social groups

Raising community understanding of child sexual abuse harm and challenging attitudes that support child sexual abuse

Improving online romance and dating site safety to reduce offender access to single parents

Providing early intervention services for men with sexual feelings towards children but who have not offended, and undetected offenders who want help

Supporting family and friends to identify problematic behaviour

Improving the capacity for child protection, law enforcement and the criminal justice system - to better identify men who are a chronic risk to children but who are adaptive in their efforts to avoid detection and prosecution

Source

• The Sector

Jevan Goulter describes himself as the campaign manager and chief strategist for the Coalition New Zealand Party led by Hannah Tamaki.

On his Facebook page, he has posted a link to an article in the New Zealand Herald along with the comment, "It's with great sadness I suggest this however my arguments are inside the article."

He told the Herald the term euthanasia is just an "umbrella" term for many forms of death, including "involuntary euthanasia", and he believes New Zealanders need to have a more in-depth discussion about the topic before making a final decision.

"If we're already talking about euthanasia, something that's going to threaten our most vulnerable people in this country, the elderly, people with Alzheimer's, dementia patients, people with disabilities, people that suffer from depression and mental illnesses, then should we not just throw a few of these paedophiles who commit heinous crimes against our children?"

He said it was his personal view and it didn't necessarily represent the political party's stance.

Following Goulter's strong stance, the Herald contacted Destiny Church who said the church is currently undertaking its own research on euthanasia and do not yet have a formal position regarding the debate.

Haimona Gray in an article published on metromag.co.nz last month provided an "incomplete list" of the political parties Goulter has associated with, including Labour, the Mana Party, Mana-Internet, TOP and, most recently, the Destiny Church-backed Coalition Party.

"How on earth former Prime Minister Helen Clark, Real Housewife of Auckland Anne "the Champagne Lady" Batley Burton, Silver Fern Maria Tutaia Folau, National Party president Michelle Boag and Brian Tamaki all ended up connected with Goulter is as mysterious and absurd as the man himself," Gray said.

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• jevangoulter.com
• noted.co.nz
• Image: instagram.com

In a recent interview, he recalled how one of his teachers "pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts." Dawkins went on to say, "I don't think he did any of us lasting harm."

Dawkins' point was that such situations must be seen in context, and that the cultural backdrop of his youth was sufficiently different from now as to make judgment more complicated and less warranted than it may seem.

"I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours," Dawkins said.

"Just as we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can't find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today," he said.

Predictably, the backlash has been intense.

Peter Watt, director of child protection at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, called Dawkins' statement "a terrible slight" to victims of such abuse.

"Mr. Dawkins seems to think that because a crime was committed a long time ago we should judge it in a different way," Watt said.

"But we know that the victims of sexual abuse suffer the same effects whether it was 50 years ago or yesterday."

No, we don't know that. In fact, we don't know that any two people will "suffer the same effects" from the same experience in the here and now, much less in completely different contexts.

Bruce Rind, an expert on the study of "intergenerational sexuality," got himself in some hot water in the 1990s when he published controversial research demonstrating that the best predictor of subjective harm is whether or not the minor consented to the experience. Continue reading

Sources

• Christopher Ryan in Psychology Today
• Image: Hampton Trust

Christopher Ryan, Ph.D., is a psychologist, teacher, and author.

Conference organizers barred access and refused comment to journalists attempting to cover the event.

A letter posted by the Federation's Office of the Clergy in January invited "cardinals, archbishops, bishops and formators" to convene in Bangkok from November 14-19 to discuss "letters from different quarters of the Church that pedophilia has already become a considerably serious problem in Asia."

Father Lawrence Pinto, executive secretary of the Office of the Clergy, told ucanews.com on November 18 that the conference, titled "The Impact of Pedophilia - Crisis in the Church in Asia," was closed to journalists and advised not to attempt to visit the venue, King David Hall on the campus of Assumption University.

A staff member of the FABC added that the seminar was "closed door" and that Fr Pinto did not want media to attend.

"Let us not be complacent that pedophilia is a problem of the West or the other continents of the world; it is equally prevalent in many countries in Asia," the letter stated.

The Church in Asia is bound "to take drastic and immediate measures to contain this issue of child abuse within the Church circles, and to deal with it squarely, without delay, before it will go out of hand like it has done in the other countries in the world," the letter added.

The letter further noted that the issue was "important and urgent" because "many a priest, religious sister, including bishops and formators are not aware of what in reality is pedophilia, and what it does to the child-victim."

Source

• ucanews.com
• Image: Dalje.com

Over the weekend, Spronck, known as the Delegate, said that sexual relationships between children and adults were not always damaging.

"Formally I always say that everyone must obey the law. But these relationships do not necessarily have to be damaging." Nieuws quoted Spronck as saying.

Spronck was commenting on another Salesian priest's committee membership in "Martijn", a Dutch pro-pedophilia group.

RTL quoted Spronck, Fr Van B.'s superior — as saying he was aware of repeated transgressions in Van B.'s past. However he didn't try to stop him from moving through three dioceses and six parishes in the Netherlands, often leaving under a cloud of suspicion, because he believed in the priest's promises to reform.

"Herman Spronck is no longer the delegate from the Salesian delegation in the Netherlands," his superior Rev. Jos Claes, leader of the Salesians in Belgium and the Netherlands, told RTL. "We fully distance ourselves from the words we find in your interview with Herman Spronck."

Fr Van B "can longer perform any pastoral duties as of today," he added.

The Salesian priest, simply known as Fr Van B, was a committee member of the "Martijn" association and also has two convictions for exposing himself to children. Although suspended from ministry, he worked as a "volunteer" helping prepare children for the first Holy Communion.

An independent commission investigating abuse cases dating back to 1945 has found that the Netherlands ranks worst behind only Ireland in a scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in Europe and the United States.

Sources

• DutchNews.nl
• Radio Netherlands
• Reuters
• Houston Chronicle
• Sun Sentinal

Widely reviled, but not outlawed, the "Martijn" association advocates the acceptance of pedophilia and the legalisation of sexual relationships between adults and children.

According to RTL Nieuws, which broke the story, the priest, referred to as Father Van B, served on the Martijn board from 2008 - 2010, and is of the view that the relationships promoted by Martijn are not harmful.

Spronck distanced the Order from Father Van B's "personal initiative".

"Membership in such organisations does not fit with the ethos of the Salesian order."

However RTL Nieuws quoted Spronck as saying "formally I always say that everyone must obey the law. But these relationships do not necessarily have to be damaging."

Neither Spronck nor the Salesian order could be reached for comment. According to its website, the Dutch arm of the Salesians has 14 employees and 400 volunteers and aims to help poor children.

The Dutch Catholic Church is also investigating claims that Father Van B had two convictions for exposing himself to children.

Despite being suspended from ministry, Van B was still able to work as a volunteer for various church organisations, including helping children prepare for first holy communion.

Church spokesman Pieter Kohnen labelled the case as "unbelievable".

Sources

• Wikipedia
• Dutch News
• Newser
• Times of India
• Mail Online
• Washington Post