A Catholic Church study finds neither Celibacy or Homosexuality is to Blame for Child Abuse

A study on the sexual abuse within the American Catholic Church has some interesting and clarifying news. The results show that the celibate or homosexual priests are no more likely to abuse children than the straight priests.

Discounting a number of theories that have been previously put forward to explain abuse by priests, the researchers conducting the study found only a small minority of abusive priests met the clinical definition of paedophiles.

Instead, researchers concluded priests were under stress and unprepared to deal with the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s.

Poor monitoring of men working with children also contributed to the child abuse epidemic, according to the report, which was commissioned by America's Catholic bishops.

For the report, researchers were given unlimited access to the medical and psychological records of priests alleged to have been involved in child sex crimes, including the results of psycho-sexual testing.

This study confirmed that researchers can't identify abusive priests in advance


source

UPDATE - CHILDREN OF 1984 AND AN IDEA

My little sister. Kamal, sent me a link today which I followed and I must share with you. It starts out:

"They were in their mothers stomach, just delivered, toddlers or school going children in 1984 when their fathers, uncles or siblings were butchered in the anti-sikh riots in Delhi which left almost 3000 sikhs dead. These children were suddenly wrenched out from their cosy family life and hurled into the world of neglect, apathy and abuse. They grew up in the shadow of the riots, struggling between going to school and making a living. Their fathers were killed and their mothers either remarried or were so busy working to eek out a living that the kids were virtually forgotten. 25 years on they have grown up into young men. Some wayward due to the neglect , others unemployed due to lack education, and yet few others transformed their lives by sheer grit and determination. These are their stories."

"Sheer grit and determination" I interpret to be that great Sikh virtue of chardi kala, which means, among other things, we never give up, no matter what!

This is the introduction to an incredible collection of pictures and the stories that go with them. These are photographs by Sanjay Austa, a professional photographer. PLEASE go check out From Children To Adults-1984 Anti-Sikh Riot Victims. I know I ask a lot of my readers, from keeping kesh to signing petitions. Here is one more action I ask of you. It won't be painless, but it will be worthwhile.

I'll have a picture here, if I can get the photographer's permission.)
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After looking at all these pictures and reading their brief histories, do you feel the need to do SOMETHING? I have a suggestion. Please take this idea to your gurudwara, wherever you are in the world.

A long time ago, I tried to get a programme going in India, invite one of the widows and her kids to join your household as an honoured family member. In India, even Sikhs don't like widows in close proximity. Not even the widows of our beloved, honoured shaheeds.

But why can't our gurudwaras do that from wherever we happen to be? Someone over there would have to find individual survivors and then they could be helped in whatever way is necessary on a one-to-one basis.

I think that kind of personal touch would help a lot. "Somebody really cares about me, as an individual, as a human being." Remember, these women feel unloved, unwanted, unappreciated...We here complain about that, but our situation is heavenly compared to them. So I suggest personal visits, if possible. When we visit Punjab, take detour to Delhi and go meet the families.

There were maybe about 10,000 Sikh heads of household killed...(I don't believe the smaller numbers)..With more than 20,000,000 Sikhs - about 4-5,000,000 families, certainly we can take care of our own. The Sikh establishment, namely the SGPC, has dropped the ball. I suggest thast we ordinary, everyday Sikhs pick up the ball and run with it.

KIVEN BHULAAN - A VIDEO

THE DIRECTORS

I do not want to say too much about this entry made by Japman Kaur, age 12 and Triman Singh of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I'll just say that their Gian Kaur is expressing openly the feelings that I keep unexpressed, close to my heart for 25 years.

Please go vote for this video at:

http://www.sikhnet.com/filmfestival/2009/kivein-bhullaan-how-do-we-forget/

It's worth the trip!

Where Ever It Is Dark - An Illustrated Poem

I came across this poem one day while reading Preeti Kaur ji's blog, The World I Stitch. As I read, I saw pictures of all that our children go through in school, especially in America and I felt the need to illustrate her painfully beautiful poem. She has graciously given me permission to reproduce the poem here. The words are hers; I am to blame for the pictures. (She approves of them, though!)

I would suggest that any children experiencing such problems, go to Khalsa Kids. There is a lot of help there. Parents are welcome, too, of course!

where ever it is dark-- poem for sikh children- REVISED

where ever it is dark (revised, kid-friendly version) 12/7/07
for r. singh (especially) and children everywhere

after school
i tell my mummy
i don't want to go back
tomorrow

she asks me why

i tell her
today in the playground
bullies
push me
punch me
kick me
shout at me
potato head!
raghead!
alladin!
even osama bin laden!
everything i know
i am not

i fight back
throw a fist

imagine the bullies as monsters
call them ugly things too
my cheeks burn
my heart thumps
i am MAD

i didn't start this
i am just one
and no one listens
when i yell
stop it!
leave me alone!
no one helps me
when the bullies
rip the cloth
from my head
pull off
my patka

not even the friends
i swing with
everyday on the monkey-bars
or the kids
who swap sandwiches with me
in the cafeteria
not even the adults
who patrol the playgrounds
to make sure
everyone follows the rules

after
bloody noses
bruises
scratches
the teachers sit us down

a peace negotiation
where no one questions
the bullies

why am i a target?

inside
i am like a match
like the ones my daddy warns me not to play with
a blue flame
which grows shorter every second
burning my insides
faster than i expect

i go home
and cry
and cry

i tell my mummy
everything

my mummy
wraps her arms
around my shoulders
tells me she loves me
with her eyes

she unwraps
my joora
lets loose
my long hair
runs her fingers through

mummy whispers
your hair
is like the night sky
your hair
is the universe

she combs my kes
with a kanga
twists my hair firm
on the top of my head
a galaxy you carry high
mummy says

she takes the square patka cloth
angles it
like a diamond
sets the patka on my scalp
and ties it tight
mummy tells me
this patka
crowns you

one day
you will wear a turban
cloth as long as the seven oceans
the full span of the earth
will rest on your head

be a brave young prince
like Sahibzaada Zorawar Singh Ji
like Sahibzaada Fateh Singh Ji
when bullies
big as kings
threaten them
for carrying the universe on their heads

like true princes
when bullies
torture them
with three nights
in the cold
in the dark

when everyone wanted them to just be children
they raised their chins high

no tears
just the ways of the lion prince

with questions and conversation
a duty for the kingdom

mummy kisses my cheeks
i kiss her back

i tell her
i will go back to school tomorrow
i will be like a prince
a shooting star

bright and brave
where ever it is cold
where ever it is dark

pk

ISRAEL - CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN and WOMEN

My dear friends reading this blog, I apologise for presenting this distasteful, disgusting article. I do feel, however, the truth of this needs to be known. I know my usual proIsraeli readers will be angry at me. Well, they'll just have to be angry. This is the truth and it needs to be known. If any of you has evidence that this is not true, please send it to me and I will publish it.

I am breaking my own rule that every post needs a picture; the appropriate pictures would get me arrested for distributing child pornography.
From IHRO:

Strip-Searching Children

Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints

By ALISON WEIR

Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some of them American citizens.

While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip searching young girls as young as seven and below.

According to interviews with women in the United States , Israel , the West Bank and Gaza , Israeli border officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to remove their clothing and submit to searches.. In some cases the children are then "felt" by Israeli officials.

Sometimes mothers and children are strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove sanitary napkins , sometimes with small daughters at their side. Sometimes women are strip searched in the presence of their young sons..

All report deep feelings of humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt.

"I remember crying and pleading with my mother," Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience when she was 12-years-old, hoping that her mother could convince the Israeli official to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report.

"They had machine guns," El-Haddad explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so that they won't return to Palestine

Oregon attorney Hala Gores remembers being strip-searched at the age of 10. Her family, Palestinian Christians from Nazareth , were leaving Israel because of Israeli discrimination against Christians. Gores has never returned to her family's ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her.

The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.

New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was "seven, eight, nine years old" on family trips to visit her parents' original home in Palestine . On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport . When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.

Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight.

Zayid, a former class president and yearbook editor at New Jersey 's Cliffside Park High School known for her irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing uncontrollably. "No one spoke up," she remembers. "There were several women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom said a word."

When she boarded her flight, Zayid recalls, "The flight attendants looked at me in disgust." She told them what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own clothing to use.

In addition to taking her sanitary napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight.

Zayid, who founded a program for newly disabled Palestinian youths ­ many of them permanently disabled from attacks by Israeli forces ­ was so depressed by her treatment that she determined never to return. "But that's what they want," she says, "They want us to get to the point where we don't go back." She says that she is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank ..

Israeli practices vary and seem to be applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some instances women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed, they describe having to rummage through the heap of clothing, naked and barefoot, to find their own garments.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor

While these policies largely target Palestinian and Palestinian- American women and children, some non-Palestinian Americans also report being subjected to strip searches by Israeli officials.

St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally.

The strip searches appear to be illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour"

Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy"

In the US , such policies would appear to violate child abuse statutes. The state of Utah , for example, defines Child Abuse as: "Any form of cruelty to a child's physical, moral or mental well-being." The Encarta Encyclopedia defines child abuse as "Intentional acts that result in physical or emotional harm to children."

While the If Americans Knew investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including American citizens, children, and the elderly.

While the practice is widely applied, many people find it too humiliating to speak of. One 68-year-old Christian businessman, who had been stripped naked at Ben Gurion airport in 2006 before being allowed to board his flight to return home, had never revealed his experience to his family until he learned of the If Americans Knew investigation. He then explained to his daughter why he had previously told her that he might never return to his original home, now in the state of Israel ..

Christians, a thriving community that made up approximately 15 percent of Palestine 's population before Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel (Muslims were 80 percent and Jews 5 percent), have now dwindled under Israeli occupation to approximately two percent of the total population.

Israeli spokespeople and sympathizers have bristled in recent months at the title of a book by former President Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.." In reply, Carter has emphasized that the Israeli "apartheid" he is describing is limited to the West Bank and Gaza . Many analysts have disagreed with Carter, providing evidence of pervasive discrimination within Israel itself. The If Americans Knew finding that Israel has been routinely strip-searching non-Jewish citizens of Israel would also indicate a wider policy of Israeli discrimination.

Since American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a Washington DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.

"We are extremely upset to learn that Israel is using American tax money in ways that degrade and humiliate women and children," says CNI President Eugene Bird. "We call on all Americans to help us on this campaign."

The organization urges people to begin contacting their Congressional representatives immediately, and to disseminate the video report by If Americans Knew as widely as possible.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew.
She can be reached at: alisonweir@yahoo.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/weir03152007.html

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WHY TRY TO FIT IN? YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!

EGYPT COLLABORATING IN PERSECUTION OF GAZAN CHILDREN

For those of you who think I am too easy on Egypt, I offer you this sad and sickening story. What the hell is going on?

Aren't the Israeli bombs enough?

Gazan children denied treatment abroad

Children prevented from leaving through Egypt border as Palestinian Authority seeks to excise influence on Gaza.

By Jonathan Cook - JERUSALEM

For four days running, an ambulance has driven 15-year-old Amira Ghirim from Shifa Hospital in Gaza to the Rafah border in the hope that she will be allowed to cross into Egypt and then on to France, where she has been promised emergency surgery.

Amira’s left arm and thigh were crushed and her internal organs damaged by falling rubble when a shell hit her home in the Tel al Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City in the final days of Israel’s offensive. The attack killed her father, brother and sister, leaving her an orphan.

But, despite her urgent need for surgery, Amira has been turned away at the border each time, said her aunt, Mona Ghirim. “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.”

Ms Ghirim said Amira’s condition has been deteriorating because of the long periods out of hospital. Yesterday, after hearing news that the border would remain shut, they decided to abandon the journey. “She is very ill and these futile trips are not helping.”

Amira is one of four children who have been offered potentially life-saving surgery by a team of doctors in France. But she and the other children appear to be victims of a bureaucratic wrangle involving the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Egypt.

Mohammed Salem, the head of a medical group based in France known as Pal Med, was among the doctors accompanying the children through the crossing last Friday. He said the doctors had been allowed through, but the ambulances carrying the children were blocked. When the doctors tried to return, they were denied entry into Gaza.

“We do not know why the children were refused,” he said. “We had organised all the relevant papers and documents. We were told once we passed through Rafah that the ambulance carrying the children would be allowed to follow.”

The reason appears to be a sudden change of policy by the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah, which issued a statement the day before the four children tried to leave Gaza saying that it believed there was “no more reason to refer any more children for treatment abroad”.

Nearly 1,300 Palestinians were killed and a further 5,300 injured during Israel’s 22-day attack on Gaza.

In the days immediately after Israel’s declaration of a ceasefire on Jan 18, hundreds of seriously wounded Gazans were transferred through the Rafah crossing into Egypt. Many are being treated in Egyptian hospitals, and others have been sent abroad.

But in recent cases, Egyptian officials appear to have preferred to abide by the wishes of the Palestinian health ministry than create diplomatic friction.
Two of the four children, Hazem Abu Odeh, 12, and Iman Khadum, nine, need surgery to stop bleeding from their kidneys.

The fourth, Alla Abu Dagan, 16, suffered multiple fractures and abdominal wounds from a shell blast.

A diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Amira and the other children had probably been caught in a political row resulting from the split between the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, and the Hamas government in Gaza.

“The PA wants to show it is exercising authority in Gaza, too. It is using its control over the international medical aid reaching Gaza as a way to show it is in charge and making things happen,” the source said.

The Palestinian health ministry was unavailable for comment.

Ms Ghirim said her niece had been through a terrible trauma. “After the house was shelled, she crawled out of the building to get help, but found the street deserted. She slept out in the open and told me she could hear the voices of soldiers speaking Hebrew all night.

“In the morning she crawled 500 metres to another house to hide. She stayed there until she was eventually found when the owner returned home. He said she was in a shocking condition, covered in blood and dust.”

International medical organisations have been carrying out their own assessments of conditions inside Gaza over the past few days. The World Health Organization is due to issue a report in the coming days.

A team of 12 Israeli Arab doctors from Physicians for Human Rights returned on Sunday. They warned that Gaza’s health care system had been stretched to its very limits and that wounded patients were at risk of dying.

Riyad Haddad, a surgeon at the Carmiel Medical Centre in Haifa, said: “There has been a lot of medical aid, but the treatment doctors are able to offer has been severely compromised by Gaza’s many months of being cut off from the rest of the world.”

He said technicians lacked training to operate modern hospital equipment, doctors had not attended medical seminars on the latest developments in their fields, and there was a severe shortage of trained nursing teams.

He also said that Gaza lacked the psychologists needed to deal with the vast scale of mental trauma inflicted on the population.

Of the thousands of injured, more than 600 would be left with permanent disabilities, he said. “Gaza badly needs proper rehabilitation centres to cope with that number of disabled.”

Dr Haddad said many of Gaza’s doctors he spoke with had reported unusual and difficult-to-treat injuries that appeared to be the result of Israel using experimental weapons during the offensive.

He also warned that unexploded ordnance was already claiming the lives of children, who were playing with munitions lying among the rubble. Last weekend the International Committee of the Red Cross said unexploded ordnance posed a “major new danger” to the civilian population.

Gaza may yet face major epidemics such as cholera that could claim many more lives, Dr Haddad said. “Although most of the bodies have been recovered from the rubble, you can see and smell that there are dead animals – sheep, goats, dogs and cats – everywhere.”

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. A version of this article originally appeared in The National.

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, STOP THIS!!

I CALL ON ISRAEL! I CALL ON EGYPT! I CALL ON ALL THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD TO PUT AN END TO THIS ATROCITY!

Frankly, I no longer care who is to blame. We are all responsible!

I have no time to write a good post today, so just look at the pictures. Then write your governmental representatives of your country to put an end to this murder of innocent children! If enough of us insist and don't quit insisting, they will listen. Do it now, this minute! How many will die horribly while you hesitate?

I have come under considerable fire for harping on this horror that is Gaza. No matter. I will continue harping until it is resolved or I am dead!