James sentence should be appealed

OTTAWA - The Green Party of Canada is joining the calls for the Manitoba government to appeal the Graham James sentence.  The former junior hockey coach was sentenced to a paltry two years for sexually abusing the young boys under his care.

“We are very concerned that this light sentence will have a profound effect on other victims who may never come forward, since they do not appear to be taken seriously,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

“This man could be out of prison by the end of the year.  The punishment does not seem to fit the crime.”

“We also hope that treatment will be in place along with his punishment.  The victims deserve to know that everything possible is being done to ensure this pedophile will not harm another child,” said May.

Little Warriors Substance Abuse

 

littlewarriors.ca

Pope urges church to reflect on sex abuse or The 70's; Everyone's diddling so Priests should too!

Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common. (notice that whenever the church makes any sort of apology there is always a very big BUT blaming the rest of society for their criminal behaviour?)

In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” that required the church to accept the “humiliation” as a call for renewal.

“In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the pope said.  (In other words. It was okay to rape and molest children back in the good old days)

Diddler Gets Pardon.

I was just informed of the following story, which to me has some personal significance because it was highly pubicized around the same time as the story of my sexual abuse. For once, I have to agree with our Prime Minister, although I suspect his motives are more in line with getting votes not for any concern for victims. He says he thinks it is 'gravely disturbing' in that Pope-ish sort of way, which is to say, the Pope and the church probably find child sexual abuse disturbing in that it may reduce their financial intake. Either way I think it is disturbing and wrong because it is.

Graham James Pardoned for Sex Crimes

Josh Pringle
Sunday, April 4, 2010

A former junior hockey coach who pleaded guilty to sexual assault has been quietly pardoned by the National Parole Board.

The Canadian Press reports Graham James was pardoned on January 8, 2007 after he was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in 1997.

Nova Scotia bishop facing child porn charges

A bishop based in Nova Scotia has been charged with possessing and importing child pornography, just weeks after his diocese reached a $15-million settlement with people who said they were abused by priests as children.
Raymond Lahey, 69, resigned from his post with the Roman Catholic diocese of Antigonish on the weekend before news of his arrest became public knowledge on Wednesday.
Police says Lahey was sent for a secondary examination at the Ottawa airport as he was returning from a foreign country on Sept. 15.
Ottawa police said in a news release that border services searched his laptop and "found images ... that were of concern."
The laptop and other media devices were seized by border guards.
Read the full story: The Toronto Star

Just one more example of the good works of Christianity.  What makes this even more pathetic and sad is that I'm not really surprised by this. 

Deliver Us From Evil

From the Toronto International Film Festival site:

Director Amy Berg has been a producer for CBS News and CNN. Her first feature documentary delivers a shattering and revealing account of the human cost of this issue. She tells the story of Father Oliver O’Grady, a notorious pedophile who used his position – as well as his Irish charm – to rape and abuse members of dozens of Catholic families across northern California over a twenty-year period. His victims ranged from a nine-month-old infant to the middle-aged mother of another adolescent victim. Astonishingly, despite ample signs and warnings as to his proclivities, the Church moved him from one parish to another, covering up the reality of what was going on from both the unsuspecting members of each new community and from the police. Church documents prove that, beginning in 1973, his evil deeds were done with their full knowledge.