Rapist priest gets 10 years in jail for abusing boy in summer camp

The Newburyport, MA news reported that Richard McCormick, 73, a priest who at one time was in a position equivalent to that of a bishop, was found guilty of five counts of child rape, incidents that took place at a summer camp in Ipswich operated by the Salesian order on the grounds of the former Sacred Heart Retreat during the early 1980s.

Lawrence Superior Court Judge Mary Lou Rup said McCormick “preyed on and exploited the vulnerability of a young boy who was in his care,” leaving him with lifelong scars.  Judge Rup said that the victim’s testimony shows that the effects of abuse are permanent. 

Everyone saw the man, now 44, cry as he remembered being put in a storage closet by McCormick who repeatedly raped him during two summers in 1981 and 1982.  The victim said, “The only thing that matters now is he can’t do it to any more children.”

The convicted McCormick showed little reaction to the sentence, which will be carried out in the state prison in Walpole and if he is still alive by then it will be followed by 10 years of probation. I hope this is a message to the rest of the rapist priests that justice will be served. 

Get off your chair Pope Francis and send the pedophile priests to jail, not to the streets

All week we’ve been hearing about the excommunication of a pedophile Argentine priest as if it was a great step forward in Pope Francis’ policy for crimes against children. The priest, Jose Mercau sexually abused four teenagers and was given a 14-year prison sentence after he admitted his crimes. Instead he went to jail for 15 days in 2011 and then was sent to a monastery and got out last March – why so soon? So now he is excommunicated – how does that help the children he abused?  Why was this covered in the media like it was some kind of miracle?

Not everyone thinks it was such a wonderful gesture by the Pope: "The church still has a long way to go," Sebastian Cuattromo, director of the advocacy group Adults for the Rights of Infancy, told the Associated Press. Francis' policies "are being carried out because of the long fight by the victims," said Cuattromo, who was sexually abused by a priest at age 13.

This is just more “smoke and mirrors”  because the long history of the catholic church and its popes shows that much gets said but little gets done.  So the pope met with victims of abuse from Ireland, Germany and Britain and he begged forgiveness for the church – how did that help?   "Over the past 2,000 years, two popes have met with about two dozen clergy sex abuse victims. Very little has changed," Mary Caplan, a leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement sent to NBC News. "A dozen popes could meet with 100 victims, and very little will change. These meetings are public relations coups for the Vatican and a distracting placebo for others."

So priests are defrocked, excommunicated, sent to monasteries, where in most cases they just continue what they were doing – those let loose in the streets are unsupervised and God help the children.

It’s going to take much more work on the part of the church and the pope before children are truly safe. Pope Francis, get off your golden chair and send all the known clergy rapists of children to jail where they belong!  

Shine the Light – Uncovering child sexual abuse by the catholic church

This is an excerpt from the book “Smothered”, what I wrote about my abuse by a priest and nuns:

“There is no time limit on trying a murder case. There should be no time limit for bringing a child rape case to justice. If murderers get life imprisonment or the death penalty, pedophile rapists (and those who cover up their crimes) should get the same punishment because it is the same as killing the child – it is a death sentence for the victim – a living death or for many suicide stops the pain.”

What the sexual abusers of children do to their victims causes so much pain and suffering: physically and psychologically that they can’t function in society – it is carried in their minds and touches all of their relationships. It lasts a lifetime. Many survivors can’t tell anyone about their physical and mental pain and they don’t get treatment – they suffer silently, commit suicide, or they just die.  You or someone you care about may be one of the survivors who went through the pain and suffering but remain silent.

We need you to speak out -- there are many ways to do so. If you have physical problems like I do -- with my shoulder that hurts because the nun knocked me off the bench – tell your doctor how you were injured. If you have emotional problems say where they came from. Recording what the abusers did and who they are identifies them for the world.  Talking on blogs like this one spreads the message.

We need to speak as one voice to the senators, congressmen and other politicians and lobbyists. We need to tell them not to take vatican money (our money) to pass laws like the statute of limitations that eliminates the only chance that survivors have to get any justice in the courts. The vatican insists that it is an independent country so why is a foreign country creating U.S. laws

If the pope can recruit defenders of pedophilia, we can recruit defenders of children. We can fight with our votes and our voices. We can make their crimes visible to the world and to the law makers.  We can change the laws that hurt victims.  Voters have to find out how politicians voted on laws like having a statute of limitations that keep victims from testifying. Don’t vote for them if they are not helping the survivors or protecting our children. An article in the Daily Progress, Virginia, January 2011 quoted Grier Weeks, executive director of the National Association to Protect Children: “It’s a sad day when pedophiles and their enablers have paid lobbyists and victims have to beg for justice.”  

Why do we let nun and clergy pedophiles run rampant in our churches and schools? The church gets to us through our faith: We believe in God.  The pope and his minions take advantage of our faith and use God falsely – they hypnotize and blind us by hiding behind God in order to rape our children, to get our money and use it to defend pedophile rapists. They don’t realize that God is everything, that they are nothing and will be destroyed by their own evil. “No false gods” is their motto, but the vatican thinks they are gods. God knows of their arrogance: they pretend to be God’s translator but they have their own agenda. If they tamper with our faith in God they lose.

God had a reason for me to survive the deadly, fierce abuse: to halt them in their tracks, expose them, shed light on their perverted acts, take the battle right up to the pope in evil central and destroy their evil way of life. I hope others like me will speak out. We will use the media to expose them. They are nothing without our money and support -- they are worthless. We won’t have any kindness or mercy for them – they had none for us. The power in us, the survivors, is greater and more courageous than the lies of the pope and church for 2000 years. There will be a glorious victory for us. We outnumber the evil perpetrators and we can stand together to stop them – we can win the battles and win the war.

We are shining the light on evil: child abusers in the church and in society can’t hide from the truth. The world is better off without the pope and his brand of religion that deceives us in the name of God. Nothing lasts forever and their time has passed.  We don’t need the church if it separates us from God. All we need is God in our hearts.