August 31, 2012
The National Catholic Register has removed an interview from its website in which Father Benedict Groeschel explained his experience working with priests involved in abuse.
In his interview, Groeschel, the former head of the Office of Spiritual Development for the Archdiocese of New York, expressed sympathy for Sandusky and said that those convicted of sexual abuse for the first time deserve no jail time.
Groeschel also pointed out that “sexual difficulties” were rarely prosecuted 10 or 15 years ago, and now if “any responsible person in society would become involved in a single sexual act — not necessarily intercourse — they’re done.”
“People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that’s not the case,” he explained. “Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.”
The interview is no longer available at the National Catholic Register Website, but can still be accessed via Google’s cache.
While shocking to us in our modern mentality, this attitude is what has perpetuated abuse through the generations. Blaming the victim is a fundamental element of abuse.