Editorial from The Guide	Editorials Archive

Do a web search for the terms "pedophile priest" and "tip of the iceberg" and you will get hundreds of hits. In story after story, press and prosecutors routinely employ the iceberg cliché, warning that for each case of abuse so-far reported, hundreds more wait to be discovered. According to some estimates, half-a-million Americans have been raped by their priests.

Such high numbers reflect, in part, wishful thinking by attorneys and therapists eager to cash in as hundreds sue the deep-pocketed Catholic Church. But given that sexual shenanigans with the local priest are routine in many parishes, there's no doubt that most instances of priest/adolescent sexual contact remain private, not plastered on the front pages of papers. Even though allegations of sexual abuse routinely net accusers hundreds of thousands of dollars, most "victims" are not trying to jail or shakedown their clerical "molesters." Why not?

View our poll archive

The only answer allowed in public discourse is that such victims are silenced by shame, that their abuse has been so traumatic they cannot even speak of it.

Of course, there is a more obvious explanation: most adolescents who've fooled around with a priest either attach no particular significance to their experimentations, or remember their parish paramours with some affection and respect.

The contention that adolescents might actually enjoy priestly sexual attention is, however, absolutely heretical. No mainstream journalist is allowed to even consider that maybe the reason so many "victims" returned for hundreds of sessions of "abuse" is that they liked it.

And similarly, any "victim" who tries to assert that he sought out such attention, that he remembers it fondly, that he considers it a positive aspect of his maturation, faces enormous risks. If he is underage, he will likely be forced into therapy until he "learns" that what he thought fun and affectionate was actually monstrous perversion. And if the "victim" is now an adult, any contact he has with adolescents will become suspect; any accusation made against him, no matter how absurd, will be presumptively believed. If a teacher, he can expect to be fired. If a father, he risks having state agencies challenge his parental fitness and if in a custody dispute, he can count on never again seeing his children without court-approved supervision.

We are, therefore, unlikely to ever hear from the huge number of guys who have in their youth fooled around with priests and found it a positive, or simply neutral, experience. Fear keeps them silent.

As gay people, we know what it's like to have only selected images presented about us. For decades after the concept of "the homosexual" was formulated, the only portrait painted of homosexuals in the mainstream press was that of predatory monsters and pitiable inverts. Of course, there was more to the iceberg than the highly sensationalized and demonized "tip" paraded before the public. But anyone who suggested that homosexuality was anything other than repugnant, criminal perversion rightly feared savage social condemnation. Society had made up its mind that homosexuality was evil, and anyone who even proposed reconsidering the issue was suspect. Fear bred debilitating paranoia-- friends were betrayed and family members abandoned. But brave souls found ways against seemingly invincible forces to challenge destructive prejudices against homosexuality. More truthful and less fearful attitudes led to reconciliation, acceptance, and happier people.

As today's headlines again trumpet salacious lies about perverts threatening our youth, let us re-dedicate ourselves to fighting scandalmongers and over-zealous prosecutors and the destructive fear they breed.