Child sexual abuse and shameless media bias

This morning I caught the end of a short item about child sexual abuse on Nine's Today Show news bulletin. If I heard correctly, half of the perpetrators of 150+ plus cases in Western Australia were released into the community. I didn't hear it clearly, and it was not repeated in following bulletins, nor did I hear or see it for the rest of the day.

I was immediately impressed by the high number in a relatively small state population. Why had there been not more coverage? When ONE sexual abuse case comes up involving Catholic clergy, the media go berserk. It doesn't leave the pages of newspapers or television news bulletins sometimes for weeks.

In some cases (like the furore during the Pope's visit to Australia for World Youth Day) the media hysterics are obviously part of an ongoing campaign against the Catholic Church. The World Youth Day case, vigorously prosecuted by ABC's Lateline with Cardinal Pell as the major target, was particularly shameless, involving a twenty-eight-year-old man as the alleged paedophile victim! It's a measure of the unthinking bigotry in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that programs like Lateline appear oblivious to what they are doing.

Anybody who takes the time to investigate the incidence of child sexual abuse in Western society - even in a moderate way - will quickly learn that by far most cases concern family or family friends abusing prepubescent girls, that the incidence of child sexual abuse is no higher among Catholic clergy than among comparable groups, that between two and four percent of clergy haven been accused, and that most cases of clerical sexual abuse concern homosexual priests abusing pubescent males. Such priests have obviously given up their priesthood and gone with the Kinsey generation. I have made the case many times in my comments about the extreme media bias when it comes to reporting cases of clerical sexual abuse.

Because I am always interested to see evidence confirming my case against the media, I tried to track down the source of the Today Show report, but it seems too early for it to appear in a google search. The search, however, brought up some pertinent information on the following links:

Child abuse cases overload Queensland's courts

Teacher charged with 230 counts of child sexual abuse

190 sex claims a year in WA schools

What happened to the media hysteria that usually greets one case of clerical sexual abuse? Why are the principals of the schools involved not pilloried endlessly? Where are the law suits for compensation? Where are the expert witnesses ready to do the rounds of the radio and television chat shows, telling us that the state school system, the courts and the relevant government departments are rotten from top to bottom and that every department head is a covert paedophile? Why hasn't the minister for education been brought before the media court and forced to apologise unendingly and to defend the accusation that he condones child sexual abuse?

We know that it's only the Pope who has to apologise abjectly for such things. We know that it's only Catholic clergy that is to be pilloried and smeared. We know that it's only the Catholic Church that will ever have to pay out $600 million to victims of sexual abuse, as in the case of California. California! We also know that leading the pack in this shameless display of double standards and hypocrisy are foremost members and promoters of the Kinsey generation.

Can anyone cite a greater example of hypocrisy?

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com