Three Irish Olympic swimming coaches have now been exposed as child abusers. The latest is Ger Doyle who has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison after being convicted of 35 counts of indecent and sexual assault against five boys in the 1980s and 1990s. Three coaches from a small organisation is a lot. If they were priests, commentators would be demanding to know what it is about the profession that attracts child abusers?
As we know, the prevalance of child abusers among the clergy (4 percent in all according to US figures, perhaps a couple of points higher here) is often linked to the nature of the priesthood itself. They are celibate, they are all men, they don't have children of their own. Put all of these things together, the anti-Catholics tell us, and you have the recipe for a child abuser.
Very well then, how do they explain the prevalance of child abusers among swimming coaches, and why isn't this question even being asked?
The prevalance of child abusers among swimming coaches is easy to explain, of course. By becoming a swimming coach a child abuser gains trusted access to boys and girls in various states of undress.
The reason the question of why abusers are attracted to swimming coaching isn't even being asked is because there is no ideological gain in asking it. No-one dislikes swimming coaches as a profession, but plenty of people dislike priests and the Catholic Church for ideological reasons and therefore they will blame child abuse on the nature of the Catholic Church itself in order to discredit Catholicism.
If these commentators were more honest, they would admit that child abusers are attracted to any profession that gives them trusted access to children. It has nothing to do with the priesthood per se, as the experience of Swim Ireland shows.
Incidentally, Swim Ireland was also extremely slow to listen to allegations made against its coaches. Sometimes it angrily dismissed the accusations. Sound familiar? This isn't just a Catholic problem, or even mainly a Catholic problem, as the anti-Catholic insist. It is a human problem.
Hello Peadar,
The Irish Catholic ought to give you a blog!
David
Where did I argue that Swim Ireland has the same power as the Catholic Church? My argument is that the prevalance of abusers among swimming coaches shows that abusers are attracted to work that will give them trusted access to children and that there is nothing particular to the Catholic priesthood itself which does this. The claim that there is, is ideological, not factual.