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
David, I think we are a long way off the final word being said about paedophilia either in the clergy or in society at large. In regard to the former, we seem to see this in purely insular terms. Though most people are probably aware of the scandals in the US, I don't think people realise this is an international and interdominational problem. It would be good to see a major analysis done of this problem involving several jurisdictions and several denominations, including non-Christian denominations.
Secondly, compulsive focus on clerical paedophilia has taken our eye off the ball (I'm deliberately using a sporting metaphor here) in regard to other instances of paedophilia. The fact is that paedophiles flock to areas which bring them into contact with children. The clerical state, or its functional equivalent, is one. Teaching is another. Sport is another. Social Work is another. Scouting is another. I mentioned on another thread I am a qualified teacher and I have teaching experience - at no point was I ever assessed as to my suitability for teaching or working with young people. Likewise, my wife is a qualified primary teacher who also has extensive experience as a leader in girl guides in a different jurisdiction. No questions were asked about her suitability on either count.
At this point we need to look at the bigger picture. If a police state standard is applied to everyone volunteering to work for children or youths in any respect, we will see our young people really impoverished in a way our resource driven society may not comprehend. To quote a (hypocritical, but accurate) Iago in Shakespeare's Othello 'He who steals my purse steals thrash - 'twas mine, 'tis his...but he who steals my good name profits not himself but leaves me poor indeed'. It seems we may see a sociological experience of this.
To reflect on my own experience, as a teenager I benefited from several summers in the Gaeltacht at great cost to my parents. Though I saw nothing personally, the mid-'90s saw serious allegations around the founder of the particular coláiste samhraidh I was involved with (a married layman with extensive experience in second and third level Irish language education plus related youth work). This totally changed the atmosphere of summers in the Gaeltacht ever since - and not for the better.
Oceanclub is proving David Quinn's point - it is about ideology.
Trying to claim that Swim Ireland has the same power in society as the Catholic Church really is scraping the bottom of the argument barrel.
P.
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.