Irish Salem

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Moral Panics; Satanic Abuse, Recovered Memory - and Ireland

The following is (another) extract from the discussion following Luke Gittos article "No Justice in a Year of Moral Crusades" in Spiked magazine (22 December 2015). We had almost no examples of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in Ireland and - I think - a good deal less Recovered memory than in the UK or the USA. The one partial exception concerning SRA is significant because the lady in question had spent decades in the UK. We Irish have a tendency to blame all our ills on our British neighbours; in the case of Satanic Abuse we may have been right!

Rory Connor
9 January 2016

Tom Burkard 11 days ago

In all this child abuse hysteria, we seem to have forgotten the Cleveland scandal of the late 1980s, when Dr Marietta Higgs and Dr Geoffrey Wyatt removed 121 children from their parents on their diagnosis of rape made on the basis of their 'anal dilation' test. Had they not been fanatics like one of the more conspicuous posters on this thread, they might have troubled themselves to try their test on all children: on this basis, every child in the world would have been raped. We have had similar examples in the Orkneys and Rochdale where social workers and medical personnel were quite frankly deranged, and used the most unscrupulous means to get 'evidence' of abuse.

I once accompanied a single father to hospital--his 4-yr-old son had been with us when we stopped off for a pint. The boy fell off a bar stool and got a severe nose bleed. The father was reluctant to take him into the doctor, because he came from a working class home and he knew how he'd be received. The following day it was pretty obvious the boy's nose was broken, so he took him in to see his GP. Quite predictably, he was ordered to report to the nearest hospital, and he phoned me and asked me to go along. As I was the director of a children's charity, he hoped that they would take me word.

In fact it took a long time before I had a chance to say a word. Nurses and doctors fell upon us like vultures, making no attempt to disguise their glee at finding another 'victim'. The poor kid had his anus examined by three separate doctors--if that isn't child abuse, I'd like to know what is.

Fortunately, the registrar was a young German woman who quite clearly didn't think a lot of her colleagues. At last the father and I had a chance to say what happened. I'm glad to say that she didn't find it necessary to contact the landlord of the pub, who also witnessed the accident.

At around the same time, a friend of mine--an Army Officer--and his wife decided not to take their 9-mo-old son to a doctor after he'd got a second-degree burn. Even 'respectable' middle-class people were terrified of abuse allegations.

Long before this, my sister 'recovered' memories of child abuse and caused great distress in our family. She was so convincing that even I started to wonder if there might be something in it--until she made an allegation that could not possibly have occurred.

Of course, neither I nor anyone else has any evidence to prove how prevalent sexual abuse of children may be. This is all the more reason to let the legal system take its course--and to end the scandalous abuse of family courts, where due process is ignored, and reporting banned. When I was running the children's charity, BBC4's Children's Affairs reporter warned me to stay out of the clutches of social workers: she knew what happens when cases are tried in camera.

Courts of law are not infallible, but the only alternative is anarchy.

Kilbarry1 Tom Burkard 10 days ago
The late cultural historian Richard Webster suggested to me that the reason Ireland had practically no Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) cases was the influence of the Catholic Church and its strong opposition to Freudian ideas. The Church opposed Freudianism because of the implications for Catholic doctrines regarding sin, free will and personal responsibility. Richard Webster was an atheist (NOT of the Dawkins persuasion) but he was also a major critic of Freud and and believed that SRA was a logical development of his ideas.

Based on what Richard Webster suggested, I developed my own theory that false allegations of child murder in Ireland are our equivalent of SRA - except that in OUR case Freudian delusions are replaced by open lying. (I am thinking in particular of the cases where no child died of ANY cause during the period in question). However I don't know enough about Freud and he didn't know enough about Ireland to prove anything of the sort. It could be a useful subject for a law graduate looking for a doctoral thesis!

Incidentally the 2008 hysteria about child-killing in Jersey was possibly based on the with-hunt in Ireland re the old industrial school at Letterfrack in Co Galway. Letterfrack is as remote a location in my country as the island of Jersey is vis a vis the UK. Also the Jersey policeman largely responsible was born in Derry!
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- Gordon McKenzie Kilbarry1 10 days ago
  My mother was a disciple of the blessed Sigmund, and when I arrived in England in my late 20s I was relieved to find that Freud worship was a decidedly marginal enthusiasm. I never had the patience to read any of his gospels, and regarded advocates of psychoanalysis as narcissistic obsessives. However, I'm not sure how this could have developed into SRA. It's an interesting theory, and I'd be obliged if you could spell it out. I assume this entails something more than an obsessive antipathy to the church.
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  - Kilbarry1 Gordon McKenzie 5 days ago
    
    Sorry I can only provide some limited guidance. Richard Webster's website is still maintained by his friends and includes several of his articles on Freud.
    http://www.richardwebster.net/
    
    I find the theory behind his thesis difficult to understand. I think he is saying that modern society thought it had dispensed with the concepts of Sin, Evil and the Devil but that Freud was a kind of secular Messiah who brought them back in secular form. One of my difficulties with Webster's THEORY is that he emphasizes that Freud re-established the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. However that doctrine states that evil is a basic - although not dominant - element in human nature and that therefore we are all sinful. I would have thought that this doctrine works AGAINST the modern tendency to see child sex abusers as sub-human vermin. Evil is within us and we are not going to eradicate it by transferring our guilt and demonizing any section of humanity no matter how nasty their behaviour.
    
    From a pragmatic point of view however, I think that Webster's theory has a lot to be said for it. Ireland is much influenced by American and British culture. Yet we had practically no trace at all of the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria. I can think of only one partial exception. That was in relation to the "Dalkey House of Horrors" case, where evidently real allegations of abuse were mixed up with some fantasies - including a hint of SRA.
    http://www.alliancesupport.org...
    
    Two psychologists today told Dublin County Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty that they were in no doubt that Cynthia Owen had been raped and gave birth to a baby that had been murdered.
    
    The inquest heard the 45-year-old told Dr Dawn Henderson that she had been the victim of satanic abuse and also mentioned a paedophile ring, details of which she did not want disclosed at the hearing.
    
    The lady in question was born in Ireland but spent decades in the UK - which I think is very significant. I suspect that the absence of SRA here (and the lesser role of Recovered Memory compared to the US and UK) is due to the influence of the Catholic Church. OK this does not constitute scientific proof but I still think that it might provide a thesis for a law student to investigate

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

The Year We Forgot What Free Speech Means (as per Mike Hume of "Spiked"

I have copied and pasted my contribution to the above discussion on "Spiked" magazine. The original article is by Mike Hume the 'Editor at Large' but I am debating with Jack Richards from Australia. He was responding to another commentator on the subject of Aboriginal "culture" (i.e. whether or not it actually exists) but I successfully sidelined him to the situation in Ireland. Well not so much sidelined. BEFORE I intervened, Jack Richards commented on the so-called "Stolen Generation" of Aboriginal children in Australia in terms which also apply to Irish children who were placed in industrial schools and other residential homes i.e. they were (and still are) taken into care because of neglect, abuse (physical and sexual), dysfunctional homes riven by alcoholism etc.

I have noticed before, that people who KNOW that many claims in their own area of experience are false, still tend to believe that the Catholic Church in Ireland has a major problem with child abuse. It's probably due to the policy - initiated by the Irish Sisters of Mercy - of apologising to false accusers on the basis that their claims - however spurious - are evidence of the terrible suffering they must have experienced. It's an insane policy that shames us in the eyes of the world.

Rory Connor
updated 9 January 2016

The Year We Forgot What Free Speech Means

- Jack Richards John W 9 days ago
  Aboriginal history and Aboriginal culture has been invented by Marxist historians and sociologists over the last 50 years. The "Stolen Generation" was invented by the self-acknowledged Marxist Peter Read in a 20,000 word monograph written in 1983. None of it is true and it's full of errors, omissions, misrepresentations and out-right lies.
  No-one "stole" half-caste children - but plenty were taken in to care. Not as many as are taken today and today they are still taken for the same reason: neglect, abuse (physical and sexual), untreated illnesses, dysfunctional homes riven by alcoholism, drug addiction, endemic violence and grinding poverty because the "parents" spend every cent of their "sit down" money or alcohol, drugs and gambling.
  Some easy proof that the Aborigines did not know they'd been "stolen" until a white Marxist told them so is in the "List of Demands" made by those activists (again, led by white communists at the time, like Jack Mundey) who established the "Tent Embassy" in 1972. They wanted Land Rights and an end to (imaginary) segregation and so on - BUT they were completely unaware of the "stolen generation". There is no mention of it at all until AFTER Read wrote that fiction in 1983.
  In 1962 I attended a public school in outback NSW with a large Aboriginal cohort. There was a half-caste girl who was captured and carted away by welfare. She lived on the banks of the Lachlan River in a hollow under a sheet of corrugated iron. Being a "yella fella" she was rejected by the (racist) full bloods. She stank to high heaven, had head lice, scabies, impetigo and was malnourished - but the worst affliction was an untreated suppurating ear infection that had become fly-blown. You could see the maggots crawling in the oozing pus. She was about 10 years old and was regularly molested by bucks of all ages. She was taken away to the Far West Children's home - a hospital in the salubrious Sydney suburb of Manly where she was treated for those diseases as well as her gonorrhoea. About a year later she came back.
  She's still in the same town and is now an Aboriginal activist who claims to have been "stolen"!!!!! Her life was saved, she was cured of loathsome diseases and parasites and brought back to health from the edge of death, and yet she claims she was carted away by evil whites; indeed she was "stolen" from a loving family! The truth is, her mother was a drunken whore who'd sell herself for a bottle of beer and her father was unknown and no-one in the tribe gave a shit about her. The only people who did were the white welfare officers.
  Curiously, none of the "stolen generation" ever stayed stolen for very long. Even Charlie Perkins claimed to be stolen - even though the record of his life and his leaving of Alice Springs is available to anyone. He showed outstanding promise as a boy and was offered a place at a private school in Adelaide. His mother took him to the station when he left and was there to meet him when he came home for the holidays. It's all well recorded but he claimed that a great opportunity was actually an evil plot and that he'd been stolen!
  Today there are lots of "traditional" Aboriginal dance troupes and music makers and various cultural events - and all of it has been invented and choreographed since 1975. Even "traditional Aboriginal dot painting" was invented in the 1970s - by a white school teacher! It's now a tradition to have an Aboriginal All Stars Rugby League game against the rest of the world. Not to be outdone by the Maori Haka of the NZ All Blacks (so named after the colour of their shirts and shorts) they have developed their own "traditional " war dance! I might add that "Aborigines" are uncannily good at ball games but most of them, like my own family, have only a small fraction of Aboriginal DNA. My grand-children are "identified" as "Indigenous" even though they have only 1 part in 64 of indigenous blood. As I have often remarked to my beautiful "indigenous" grand-daughter, with her sapphire blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair to her waist, and easily burned Celtic skin, she's a lot more "indigenous" to the Shannon Valley in Ireland than she is to the Murray-Murrumbidgee valley in Australia.
  I can understand why they collectively want to believe all these lies whites have made up for them - especially the mixed-bloods who want to wallow in victimhood and "identify" with the full bloods - who can't stand them. There's a real incentive in cash payments and other benefits as well as "reserved" places in Universities and "identified" jobs.
  You see, the truth is a bit hard to confront. Like that girl I knew at school 53 years ago, it would be a very difficult thing to admit that your mother was a drunken prostitute who had no idea who your father was - just some anonymous white drifter who paid his shilling - and that your "tribe" didn't want you or care about you. It's much easier to believe that evil whites stole you so as to remove you from your "culture" and drove off your father who really loved you.
  It's also difficult to admit that traditional society was brutal and barbaric and, with the exception of some tribes in the Philippines, the most primitive on earth. All Aboriginal "history" pre 1788 is speculation as there are no records and it was taboo to ever speak about anyone who had died. All of what now is glorified as Aboriginal history, tradition and culture has been invented (mostly by white Marxists and self-loathers) since 1965. The reality is that it distils down to a few cave paintings believed to be of a similar age to those in Lascaux France, some marks on rocks, some old bones from Lake Mungo that pre-date the arrival of the current Aborigines, and a few middens of rubbish along the coast.
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Kilbarry1 Jack Richards 10 days ago

"Only complete fools like you, blinded by idealistic and ridiculous ideologies, believe that the lion will lie down with the lamb and we can all be one big happy family of “humanity”. That’s just such rotten bullshit and dangerous bullshit. Every pack has its dominant male and female and a pecking order and if you aren’t prepared to fight, lie and steal for yours you’ll get nothing. And that’s exactly what you’ll deserve.

I agree with a lot of what you say, while being dubious about the way you say it - but then I wouldn't describe myself as a "dominant" male. For an example of the way a community can self-destruct by adopting a lunatic variety of idealism, see my article on the decadence of the Irish Sisters of Mercy
http://www.irishsalem.com/reli...

The Sisters responded to bogus allegations of child abuse (including child murder) by apologising to the false accusers on the basis that they must have suffered great pain in order to make them say such things. The apology was supposed to "heal the pain" but surprisingly it didn't - even after the Sisters repeated it on numerous occasions. After they paid £20,000 to the parents of a child who died decades before, the parents accused a nun of murdering the baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. Try Googling the newspaper headline:
"HOT POKER WAS USED ON LITTLE MARION.. NO CASH WILL GET HER BACK; I THINK MY BABY WAS MURDERED AT THE ORPHANAGE, SAYS PAYOUT MUM."

The present position is that the Merciful Sisters blame the Irish Bishops for their problems. Their rationale may be that the Bishops made some (albeit inadequate) efforts to defend themselves - including a couple of successful libel actions against false accusers.
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- Jack Richards Kilbarry1 9 days ago
  I once read that the number of Irish children who were molested by the Catholic Clergy in Ireland actually out-number those who were not.
  Is there anyone in this world who is not an hereditary victim? Before about 1975 no-one believed that victimhood could be inherited - but indeed it can.
  My whole life has been miserable and agonising because of my inherited victimhood - and so far I haven't received a cent in compensation nor an official apology from the British Government! Bastards!
  You see I am the direct descendant of 10 Convicts transported to New South Wales. I'll forget about most of them who were just English thieves - even though one was a 14 year-old boy sentenced to death, along with his mother, for burglary in 1786 in Somerset. They hanged her but he received a reprieve and just got 14 years transportation. He spent 2 years on a hulk in Portsmouth Harbour and then shipped out on the "Neptune" with the Second Fleet in 1789. When it arrived in Sydney over a third of the convicts had died from mistreatment and starvation.
  But my real claim to victimhood dates from 1803 when Mick and Kathleen arrived in chains from Cork, Ireland. They'd taken part in the uprising of the "United Irishmen" and were thrown into the dungeons of Dublin Castle. They both got 7 years and their crime was "Taking an Illegal Oath".
  The British Government robbed me of my heritage, my culture, my language and all my relatives! I've never gotten over it!
  I often think that if it hadn't been for the stinking British invaders of Ireland and their barbarism I'd be sitting in O'Reilly's Pub in Cork, drinking Guinness, singing laments in Gaelic, dancing without moving my arms and saying "to be sure to be sure" in a broad Irish brogue.
  Instead of that luxury, here I am on the other side of the world enduring an Australian summer a few hours drive from the white-sand beaches on the Pacific Coast and being forced to drink Carlton at the local Pub and listen to Country and Western music on the juke-box and suffer all the horrors of living on a huge island full of useless stuff like all those Herefords grazing my paddocks, the iron, coal, gold, silver, copper, uranium, lead, bauxite etc and living in a country that rates only 2nd the UN's Human Development Index.
  I think the British Government should compensate me for the huge personal and cultural losses my family has endured.
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  - Kilbarry1 Jack Richards 7 days ago
    
    I once read that the number of Irish children who were molested by the Catholic Clergy in Ireland actually out-number those who were not.
    Is there anyone in this world who is not an hereditary victim? ...
    
    The reason you heard that is probably because we have about 10 separate Child Abuse "Victims" groups in Ireland, almost every one of them funded by the Irish State and literally every one of them founded after our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) made a public apology to "Victims of institutional abuse" in May 1999.
    
    Of the 10 groups, FOUR were involved in allegations of child murder against the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. The first claims related to real children who had actually died but later ones referred to periods when no child died of ANY cause. Re the latter, I coined the phrases "Murder of the Undead" and "Victimless Murders". (Google will complete the phrases for you in Ireland and hopefully in Australia as well).
    
    The leader of a FIFTH group wrote an article in the Irish Times in March 2006 explaining that some people believed that false allegations of child abuse were being made against Irish priests but "fortunately" that did NOT constitute a problem. A few months previously, two men had been convicted of trying to blackmail a well-known Irish priest, by threatening to make a false allegation against him but perhaps this gentlemen had "forgotten". His mistake was forgiven however as, a couple of years later he was appointed executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland.
    
    The leader of a SIXTH group declared in a public outburst on national television aimed at a Government Minister that he had been "raped, buggered and beaten" in an industrial school run by priests of the Rosminian Order. The leader of a RIVAL "Victims" group unhelpfully pointed out that he had specifically denied this and praised the Rosminians in a radio interview years before. (The two leaders were involved in a difference of opinion as to how large sums of Government money for Victims should be spent).
    
    The leader of a SEVENTH group was involved in a furious row with his own members regarding Compensation funds the group had received from Religious Congregations. He said he had come into his office one day and found a knife stuck in his desk etc
    
    Possibly the remaining three (or so) Victims' groups are credible OR maybe they are just small and I don't know much about them.
    
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    - Kilbarry1 Kilbarry1 7 days ago
      
      For those who want to check out the gory details:
      
      (A) In 2006 I attempted to summarise false allegations of child MURDER (in particular) directed at the Catholic Church. The link is here
      http://www.irishsalem.com/iris...
      
      I explained at the time that "If someone accuses you of child abuse 30, 40 or even 50 years ago there is no way you can clear your name. However if the same person claims you killed a child and no child died at the time, then this says a great deal about your accuser's credibility."
      
      At the time I composed the article, I had forgotten about the claim in the UK Daily Mirror (11 October 1997) that a Sister of Mercy had murdered a baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. One reason I forgot, was that the Sisters of Mercy were so "compassionate" to the accuser that they failed to sue. (The editors of The Mirror employ very high powered lawyers to protect themselves against libel actions, BUT they also realise that decadent imbeciles represent to threat.)
      
      (B) The current executive director of Amnesty International wrote in the Irish Times on 29 March 2006 that "In the past few months a number of commentators have suggested that grave injustice is being done to priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Such suggestions rightly concern fair minded people, but remarkably, no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused.”
      
      Just two months previously, two brothers had been convicted of trying to blackmail a priest Father Michael Kennedy by threatening to accuse him of child abuse. I believe that Fr Kennedy is a relative of THE Kennedys so it is remarkable that Mr O'Gorman had forgotten about the case (or maybe didn't consider it significant?)
      http://www.irishsalem.com/indi...
      (See paragraph headed "Colm O'Gorman, Nora Wall and Amnesty International" and the following one.)
      
      (C) Very handily, there IS an easily available video of the man who denounced a Government Minister on national TV for ignoring his own experiences of rape at the hands of Rosminian priests. Check out the Comments section of the Spiked article "No Justice in a Year of Moral Crusades" by Luke Gittos. The video is one of two posted by "holliegrieg justice" and I replied to him.
      http://www.spiked-online.com/n...
      
      (D) The saga of the Victims' charity "Right of Place" and the dispute about the use of its funds WAS actually covered by another Victims' group "Alliance Support". The resignation of the Right of Place founder is dealt with here
      http://www.alliancesupport.org...
      
      and there are several background articles on the Alliance Support website about the affair.
      
      On a related matter, several Irish Bishops were also accused of being paedophiles or conspiracy to defend paedophile priests but I won't bother you with THOSE gory details here. (As per normal, the claims were nonsense. ) However that is just Ireland. Perhaps accusers and their Child Abuse Victims' groups are more credible in Australia?
      
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      - Jack Richards Kilbarry1 7 days ago
        
        When I was 6 years old I was abused by a Sister of the Good Samaritan. The old bitch flogged me into unconsciousness in a beating that lasted for about 2 hours. She broke two canes on me and finished the job with a third. When my father complained, rather forcefully, to Mother Superior and showed her the 40+ "stripes' I had from the ankles up - including two across the face - she dismissed it as being necessary discipline. Later than night the Parish Priest, an Irishmen as they all were in those days nearly 60 years ago, rang my father and threatened to have him charged with assault for accosting the nuns! That was my last day in a Catholic School.
        
        I am of the view that there were many genuine incidents of brutality and sexual abuse carried out by the Clergy in those days, and up to very recent times, who were protected by the Church and the police and judiciary. But it wasn't just the Catholics as the current Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Australia shows - they were all in it. So far they've nailed Catholic Priests and Brothers, Anglican Ministers, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, Baptists, Jehovah Witnesses and Jewish Rabbis. It seems that any organisation that had unfettered access to children had its quota of paedophiles. From what has been revealed during the course of the RC, most of the "abuse" was homosexual in nature - especially in Catholic institutions.
        
        Having said that, I recall that in the 80s and 90s there was an outbreak of "repressed memory" syndrome when literally thousand of people suddenly remembered being abused by their fathers who all seemed to belong to Satanic Cults. There was an epidemic across the USA, here and the western world generally - and 99.9999% of it was bullshit. Now it's called "False memory syndrome" because the ideas were planted by zealous "psychologists" who attributed all psychological disorders in later life to childhood sexual abuse. Some American enthusiasts wrote a text book on the "symptoms" of childhood sexual abuse and one of the symptoms, believe it or not, was "failure to remember sexual abuse"!
        What's happening in Ireland is starting to remind me of the witch hunts of the 16th-18th Centuries and the epidemic of denunciations during the Purges in 1930's Soviet Union. All these accusations need to be looked at both sympathetically and with much scepticism because there's a very good chance they're not true. If there're large sums of money involved the credibility of the accusers must be proportionately reduced. But it's not just money that provokes denunciators: there's all that kudos and sympathy and victimhood to be milked. For some people, being a victim is the high point of their otherwise worthless life and they really get off on it. Human nature is a strange thing. I live by the theory that if you trust no-one you'll never be disappointed. I have met far more compulsive liars, frauds, swindlers and conmen than I have honest men. Indeed I can't remember ever meeting an honest man or woman.
        
        I might add that for a few years I worked in a Government department investigating theft and fraud. It was often surprising that the people we caught stealing were very well educated, held high positions, and didn't need to steal - and often the theft was so petty. For example, one very senior Civil Servant was caught for stealing the tyres off a Government owned vehicle. For the price of a set of tyres - about $600 - he lost his job and was fined double their value plus has a life-long conviction for dishonesty.
        
        But some people are such accomplished liars that, had I not known they were as guilty as sin and had the evidence of it, I'd have believed their denials. I got one woman for stealing a computer and a printer. When interviewed she denied it, of course, and was so terribly indignant that we'd accuse her! What she didn't know was that we had CCTV film of her loading the goods into the boot of her car. So after her swearing on the life her children that she was innocent, and quite convincingly doing so, we showed her the film.
        
        One major investigation had to do with a Religious School. In Australia non-government schools get subsidised for every student they educate. I forget the exact amount but it was about $2,600 per student per year and the schools have to complete a census upon which the grants, capital and recurrent, are made. In any event, the Principal of the school - a very religious man who insisted on praying for us at every opportunity - had been fudging the census and claiming for 30-40 children who did not exist and pocketing the money for himself. This had been going on for some years. Again, he was a very convincing fraud and liar and, even when confronted with damning evidence in his own hand-writing, he denied having done it! He was so convincing in proclaiming his innocence that a Committee of supporters was formed to defend him against our "false accusations" and "racist" attempts to persecute an honest man. He kept up his charade until the day of his committal hearing in the Supreme Court - then he confessed, admitted it all, and pled guilty when the Prosecution offered to drop a couple of charges.
        
        Never trust anyone, no matter how honest and convincing they seem, and you'll never be disappointed.
        
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        Kilbarry1 Jack Richards 2 days ago
        
        Regarding your last sentence, I really think that you are TOO cynical. I know some very decent human beings who - nevertheless- would not be too scrupulous about twisting the truth to get an increased Government grant or insurance payout. I probably wouldn't do either myself but that is partly because I have poor communications skills; on one occasion when I had a genuine insurance claim, I handled it so badly that I know they suspected me of fraud!
        
        Re your first sentence I know a lady who was very badly battered in kindergarten - by a female SECULAR teacher who later was admitted to a mental hospital. My friend also said that the woman could be very nice outside class but should never have become a teacher.
        
        This discussion could go on forever. I believe that the overwhelming majority of paedophile claims are false. In Ireland members of "Victims'" groups hardly ever raise objections when their leaders make transparently false allegations - of child murder for example. (The only thing that seems to arouse their ire, is controversies about money). I assume the reason they don't complain is that their own allegations are equally spurious - and they are making them for financial reasons.
        
        I know less about Australia but I recall a case a few years ago in which the head of the Vincentian Order was arrested amid huge publicity, for supposedly molesting a student 20 years previously. He was released when he was able to prove that he was not on the Australian subcontinent at the time in question. (If he had been, perhaps he would have been convicted?). There was a similar case in Cornwall, Ontario (Canada) when a number of nutcases accused practically every prominent citizen of the town of belonging to a paedophile ring. NATURALLY this included the then Bishop and it's not entirely unsurprising that he had not been Bishop, nor in the diocese, at the relevant time.
        
        There have been several allegations against Bishops in Ireland, some so ludicrous that they embarrassed our anti-clerics. I summarised them here:
        http://www.irishsalem.com/iris...
        
        Note that three former Archbishops were accused. There are only four Archbishops on the island of Ireland so I await an allegation against the Archbishop of Tuam (present or past). Cynicism is the daughter of Hysteria and cynicism is all we will be left with when this wave of hysteria finally runs its course. REAL victims of child abuse will find it very difficult to be taken seriously then.http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-year-we-forgot-what-free-speech-means/17741#.Vo1ml7aLTZ4