"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones." (Lk 17:2)
The Vatican today faces an allegation that the pope failed to take action against a dying US priest who admitted molesting
deaf children.
The claim,
made by the New York Times, is the latest in a wave of child abuse scandals to hit the Catholic church and its leaders, and brings the storm closer to the pontiff himself.
The most important part of the news is the "unprecedented apology". It is intersting to see how Catholic Church "sells" its acts and its feelings . Apology should be and must be something "free of charge" and there is no need to point out that it is unprecedented...
This emphasis induce a psychologycal feeling of gratitude to the doer that vanifies the inner meaning of apology itself.
The Church tells us: "Yes , I ask for your forgiveness : no matter what I did and when and how many times. I am normally not supposed to issue any apology , I belong to another order of things, but this time the deeds are so serious that EVEN I ask for forgiveness....The same fact that I m forced to this this by the seriousness of my bad actions implies that I MUST BE FORGIVEN and treated in a different way . You must turn a blind eye to my deeeds."
The latest charge relates to a case when Benedict – in his previous incarnation as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – was in charge of the church's doctrinal enforcement institution, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the late 1990s. The New York Times obtained papers relating to the case which it says church officials had tried to keep private.
The newspaper alleges that Vatican officials including the future pope declined to discipline or defrock the priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, who was a teacher at a school for deaf children in Wisconsin for 24 years and was suspected of sexually abusing up to 200 boys.
I cannot simply thought about a violence on a deaf young person. It conveys a weird feeling of screams that implode inside a soul.
The officials overruled pleas from US diocesan bishops and apparently dropped an
instruction by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then Ratzinger's deputy at the Congregation and now the Vatican's secretary of state, that the local bishops should initiate a secret canonical trial.
The Vatican appears to have accepted Murphy's plea, in a letter to Ratzinger in 1998, that he was dying, had repented and that the offences had occurred many years before and so were out of time. "I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood," Murphy wrote. Was he ever thinking ,while writing , of the dignity of his victims?
"I ask your kind assistance in this matter." The files contain no indication of a response; Murphy died a few months later. For sure IN PEACE!!!!
The latest case is one of thousands forwarded over decades by bishops to the Congregation, which Ratzinger headed from 1981 to 2005. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.
The fact that a religious entity which respond to something else than to State can decide in total authonomy to accuse or not to accuse, to cover or not to cover a crime perpetrated on a soul and on a citizen of a State , moreover an underage , makes me shiver....A religious ,insubstantial entity sets up a paralel reality , a paralel State and state of things and allow itself to judge , to decide , to postpone and to skip on totally earthly matters.
It takes upon itself the right to decide and to sort out .
This kind of paralel world and reality is present almost everywhere in the world , especially where monotheistic religions are strong .
They give it for granted that ONLY their representatives,normally a hierarchy, speak to God and know the God interpretation of reality . What matters then is to preserve this system of listeners and interpreters of God's will and word.
Every State is subject to people in the end. People can make a revolution, can even kill their representatives in any kind of regime. Thinking to kill, to revolutionize a religious establishment is a taboo. It has ben stolen from the possibilities of the humankind.
The documents that the church allegedly wanted to keep secret include letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims' affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Murphy, and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican.
Not even science or medicine are allowed to have a word in this and if they try they are overruled.
Local police and prosecutors also ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents. During Murphy's time at the school, between 1950 and 1974, three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that he was sexually abusing children, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities. Of course because Chirch is beyond the human law.
So they use the natural shame of any human being on this matter and the fear and the taboos again that they cast over sexuality to better use it against Nature.
Sexuality is the voice of Nature and it must be silenced or , if this is not possible, its sound must be distorted or perverted or blamed.
Instead of being disciplined, Murphy was quietly moved by the archbishop of Milwaukee, William Cousins, to the diocese of Superior, in northern Wisconsin, in 1974, where he worked freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention centre, until his death.
The Vatican told the newspaper that Murphy had certainly violated "particularly vulnerable" children and the law, and that it was a "tragic case", but added that it was not informed about the case until 1996, years after civil authorities had investigated the case and dropped it.
It was not until 1996 that Cousins's successor as Milwaukee archbishop, Rembert Weakland, tried to have Murphy defrocked. After getting no response from Ratzinger, Weakland wrote to a different Vatican office in March 1997 saying the matter was urgent because a lawyer was preparing to sue, the case could become public and "true scandal in the future seems very possible".
Weakland, who resigned in 2002 after a scandal involving his relationship with a man and the disclosure that church money had been used to pay him a settlement, said that in 1998 he had failed to persuade Cardinal Bertone and other doctrinal officials to grant a canonical trial to defrock Murphy. He told the newspaper: "The evidence was so complete and so extensive that I thought he should be reduced to the lay state, and also that that would bring a certain amount of peace in the deaf community."
After Murphy died aged 72Weakland wrote a last letter to Bertone explaining his regret that Murphy's family had disobeyed his instructions that the funeral be small and private, and the coffin kept closed. Weakland wrote: "In spite of these difficulties, we are still hoping we can avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the church."
How ruthless, earthless,merciless: no remorse, no understanding . Just one order and one drive: to avoid undue publicity "negative toward the church" Because Church is a pure commercial and earthly entity and it can be damages by undue publicity.
In a statement rushed out by the Vatican's press office, Benedict's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, stressed that the allegations had previously been investigated by the civil authorities and that the future pope's decision only concerned a possible trial under canon law.
The Vatican said: "It is important to note that the canonical question presented to the Congregation was unrelated to any potential civil or criminal proceedings against Father Murphy." Since he was "elderly and in very poor health, and … was living in seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that the archbishop of Milwaukee give consideration to addressing the situation by, for example, restricting Father Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts. Father Murphy died approximately four months later, without further incident."
This means that you can kill a body and a soul and later ,if after over 20 years you die in poor health "without further incident" you are not a killer ...Does it apply to all the killers or just to priests? Could you still hear the screams of the deaf and weak children abused? Were they not poor or crying for the same pity and forgiveness?
It added that neither that directive "nor the code of canon law ever prohibited the reporting of child abuse to law enforcement authorities". Was there any need to specify it?
The Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and scandals related to
sexual abuse committed by
Catholic priests and members of
religious orders that first rose to widespread public attention in the last two decades of the 20th century.
Beyond the actual abuses, much of the scandal focused around the actions of some members of the
Catholic hierarchy who did not report the crimes to legal authorities and reassigned the offenders to other locations where they continued to have contact with minors, giving them the opportunity to continue their sexual abuse.
Some bishops and psychiatrists contended that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling. In response to the widening scandal, Pope John Paul II declared in 2003 that "there is no place in the
priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young".With the approval of the
Vatican, the hierarchy of the church in the United States instituted reforms to prevent future abuse including requiring background checks for Church employees and volunteers and, noting the preponderance of adolescent males (teenage boys) amongst victims of abuse, warned that a more searching inquiry is necessary for a homosexually oriented man; and the worldwide Church also prohibited the
ordination of men with "deep-seated
homosexual tendencies".
Some members of the church hierarchy and outside commentators have argued, quoting studies relating to the USA, that media coverage of the issue has been excessive given that abuse occurs much more frequently in other institutions.Can this be an extenuating circumstance? everything has been tried rather than focusing on the real issue. The Church and the other Institutions ,included sometimes the State ,try to divert the attention from this crime inducing a false feeling of guilt and even describing the Pope and the Hierarchy as harassed by the Media or the general public. They even compared the Pope the Jews persecuted by the Nazis!!!!
The Rev Raniero Cantalamessa was speaking at Good Friday prayers in St Peter's Basilica, attended by the Pope.
In his sermon, he quoted a Jewish friend as saying the accusations reminded him of the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism".
His comments angered Jewish groups and those representing abuse victims.
Father Cantalamessa said Jews throughout history had been the victims of "collective violence" and drew a comparison with recent attacks on the Roman Catholic Church.
He read the congregation part of a letter from a Jewish friend who said he was "following with disgust the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope...
"The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted from the letter.
Father Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household, is the only person allowed to preach to the Pope. And later the Vatican said that is words were not representing the official position of the Catholic Church!!!
The comments show the Church is continuing to defend itself rigorously and outspokenly against accusations of having systematically covered up cases of sexual abuse by priests in recent decades.
This remarks are offensive and repulsive.
I haven't seen St Peter's burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests.s.
The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims.
They're sitting in the papal palace, they're experiencing a little discomfort, and they're going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?
The collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of six million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault and maybe in the end JUSTICE for silent victimes .
Some commentators have said that the scandal highlights deep-seated problems with
mandatory celibacy in the priesthood of the Catholic Church and how that institution deals with allegations of child abuse by its clergy.
In 2002, the John Jay report tabulated a total of 4392 priests and deacons in the U.S. against whom allegations of sexual abuse were considered by their diocese to have been "substantiated". In 2001, major lawsuits emerged in the United States and Ireland, alleging that some priests had sexually abused minors and that their superiors had conspired to conceal and otherwise abet their criminal misconduct .Although the scandals in the U.S. and Ireland unfolded over approximately the same time period, there are some significant differences between them. In the United States, most of the abusers were parish priests under
diocesan control. While there were also a significant number of abuse cases involving parish priests in Ireland, another major scandal involved abuse that was crime to have been committed by members of religious orders working in Catholic-run institutions such as
orphanages and reform schools. In the United States, the abuse was primarily sexual in nature and involved mostly boys between the ages of 11 and 17. In Ireland, the allegations involved both physical abuse and sexual abuse; children of both genders were involved, although a large majority were male.
The 2004
John Jay Report comissioned by the american Church itself was based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The surveys filtered provided information from diocesan files on each priest accused of sexual abuse and on each of the priest's victims to the research team, in a format which did not disclose the names of the accused priests or the dioceses where they worked. The dioceses were encouraged to issue reports of their own based on the surveys that they had completed.
The report determined that, between 1950 and 2002, 10,667 people had made allegations of child sexual abuse. Of these, 3300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died.
The number of abuses increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the 1980s and by the 1990s had returned to the levels of the 1950s.
[Of the 4,392 priests against whom the accusations were deemed to be credible, 3,300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died. Police were contacted regarding 1,021 of the remaining 1092 priests. 384 of these priests were prosecuted, resulting in 252 convictions and 100 prison sentences. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made were convicted and about 2% received prison sentences to date.According to the John Jay report, one-third of the accusations were made in the years 2002 and 2003, and another third between 1993 and 2001.
An overwhelming majority of the victims, 81 percent, were males. A majority of the victims were post-pubescent adolescents, with a small percentage of pre-pubescent children.Some sources have asserted that most of the victims were between the ages of 16 and 17, making the sexual abuse instances of
hebephilia rather than
pedophilia. These sources argue that, by failing to make this distinction, the media has fostered a misconception of the problem. In fact, 15% of the victims were 16 or 17 years of age, while 51% were between the ages of 11 and 14. The John Jay Report determined that just under 6% of victims were 7 years of age or younger. 16% were between 8 and 10. The vast majority of the victims (78%) were aged between 11 and 17.
In the United States, half of the 4392 priests who were found to have been credibly accused of abusing minors were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of abuse. Fewer than 7% of the priests were reported to have themselves been victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children. Although 19% of the accused priests had alcohol or substance abuse problems, only 9% were reported to have been using drugs or alcohol during the instances of abuse. Almost 70% of the abusive priests were ordained before 1970.
The John Jay report identified the following factors contributing to the sexual abuse problem
1. Failure by the hierarchy to grasp the seriousness of the problem,
2. Overemphasis on the need to avoid a scandal,
3. Use of unqualified treatment centers,
4. Misguided willingness to forgive,
A major cause of the scandal surrounding clerical sexual abuse was criticism of the actions of Catholic bishops in responding to allegations of clerical abuse. For the most part, responding to allegations of sexual abuse in a diocese was left to the jurisdiction of the bishop or archbishop.
A major focus of the lawsuits and media attention since 2002 has been criticism of the approach taken by bishops when dealing with allegations of sexual abuse by priests. As a general rule, the allegations were not reported to legal authority for investigation and prosecution. Instead, many dioceses directed the offending priests to seek psychological treatment and assessment. According to the US John Jay report, nearly 40% of priests accused to have committed sexual abuse participated in treatment programs. The more allegations were made against a priest, the more likely he was to participate in treatment. Some bishops repeatedly moved offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children.
In response to these allegations, defenders of the Church's actions have suggested that in re-assigning priests after treatment, bishops were acting on the best medical advice then available.
According to the USCCB, Catholic bishops in the fifties and sixties viewed sexual abuse by priests as "a spiritual problem, one requiring a spiritual solution, i.e. prayer".Can a prayer fix up a psychological damage ?
However, starting in the sixties, the bishops came to adopt an emerging view based on the advice of medical personnel who recommended psychiatric and psychological treatment for those who sexually abused minors. This view asserted that, with proper treatment, priests who had molested children could safely be placed back into ministry, although perhaps with certain restrictions such as not being in contact with children. This approach viewed pedophilia as an addiction, such as alcoholism which many feel cannot be cured but which can be treated and restrained.
This approach continued to be practiced by the bishops well into the mid-1980s, a period which the USCCB characterizes as the "tipping point in the understanding of the problem within the church and in society". According to Paul Isley research on priest offenders is virtually nonexistent, and the claims of unprecedented treatment success with clergy offenders have not been supported by published data.
The Catholic hierarchy has been criticized for not acting more quickly and decisively to remove,
defrock and report priests accused of sexual misconduct. In response to such criticism, contemporary bishops have asserted that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served. For example, Cardinal
Roger Mahony of the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said: "We have said repeatedly that ... our understanding of this problem and the way it's dealt with today evolved, and that in those years ago, decades ago, people didn't realize how serious this was, and so, rather than pulling people out of ministry directly and fully, they were moved."
.
It was revealed that some bishops had facilitated compensation payments to victims on condition that the allegations remained secret.
The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.
In 1962, Cardinal
Alfredo Ottaviani, Secretary of the
Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, laid down procedures to be followed in dealing with cases of
clerics (priests or bishops) of the
Roman Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents; its rules were more specific than the generic ones in the
Code of Canon Law.In addition, it instructed that the same procedures be used when dealing with denunciations of
homosexual, paedophile or zoophile behaviour by clerics. It repeated the rule that any Catholic who failed for over a month to denounce a priest who had made such advances in connection with confession was automatically excommunicated and could be absolved only after actually denouncing the priest or at least promising seriously to do so.
In 1983, the Vatican promulgated a revised Code of Canon Law which included a canon (1395, 2) which explicitly named sex with a minor by clerics as a canonical crime.
In April 2001, pope John Paul II issued Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela (Safeguarding the Sanctity of the Sacraments). This replaced the Crimen sollicitationis. All priestly sex crimes cases were to be placed under the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which, in most cases, would authorize the bishops to conduct trials themselves. To place the cases under the competence of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been criticized by some as making the process more secretive and lengthening the time required to address the allegations. For example, in his biography of John Paul II, David Yallop asserts that the backlog of referrals to the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for action against sexually abusive priests is so large that it takes 18 months to get a reply.
Vatican officials have expressed concern that the church's insistence on confidentiality in its treatment of priestly sexual abuse cases was seen as a ban on reporting serious accusations to the civil authorities. The conspiracy involved in hiding the offence is a kind of
omerta, the
Mafia code of silence.We can hypothesise that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence.
Some parties have interpreted the Crimen sollicitationis as a directive from the Vatican to keep all allegations of sexual abuse secret, leading to widespread media coverage of its contents. Lawyers for some of those making abuse allegations claimed that the document demonstrated a systematic conspiracy to conceal such crimes.
Although nation-wide enquiries have only been conducted in the United States and Ireland, this lead to a major public awareness all over the world .
In response to perceived deficiencies in canonical and secular law, both ecclesiastical and civil authorities have implemented procedures and laws to prevent sexual abuse of minors by clergy and to report and punish it if and when it occurs. In April 2003, the
Pontifical Academy for Life organized a three-day conference, entitled "Abuse of Children and Young People by Catholic Priests and Religious", where eight non-Catholic psychiatric experts were invited to speak to near all Vatican dicasteries' representatives. The panel of experts overwhelmingly opposed implementation of policies of "zero-tolerance" such as was proposed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. One expert called such policies a "case of overkill" since they do not permit flexibility to allow for differences among individual cases.Archbishop Csaba Ternyak, secretary of the
Congregation for Clergy, put the following question to the experts: "[T]o what degree one can talk about the rehabilitation of the offender, what are the most effective methods of treatment, and on what grounds we can say that a person who has never offended is at risk to sexually molest someone?"
Ternyak spoke about the way that the crisis had damaged the priest-bishop relationship. He noted that there was a "sense of gloom" felt by the overwhelming majority of priests who had not been accused of any abuse but nonethless who perceived that their bishops had turned against them and therefore had "become disillusioned about the effectiveness of the laws of the Church to defend their dignity and their inalienable rights". Ternyak also noted that "there have been more than a few suicides among accused priests." In addition, during a visit to the United States
Pope Benedict XVI said that he is "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has devastated the American church and apologized for the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and pledged that pedophiles would not be allowed to become priests in the Catholic Church.[ Pope Benedict also said he is ashamed for child abuse scandal in Australia.
The Vatican instituted reforms to prevent future United States abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees and issued new rules disallowing ordination of men with "deep–seated homosexual tendencies".
William McMurry, a
Louisville, Kentucky lawyer, filed suit against the Vatican in June 2004 on behalf of three men alleging abuse as far back as 1928, accusing Church leaders of organizing a cover up of cases of sexual abuse of children. In November, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied the Vatican's claim of sovereign immunity and allowed the case to proceed. The Vatican did not appeal the ruling.
However, when Pope Benedict was personally accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys in Texas in
Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, he sought and obtained diplomatic immunity from prosecution. Some have claimed that this immunity was granted after intervention by then US President George Bush!!!!
]In a statement, read out by Archbishop Tomasi at a meeting of the
United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 22 September 2009, the Holy See stated that the majority of Catholic clergy who had committed acts of sexual abuse against under 18 year olds should not be viewed as paedophiles, but as homosexuals who are attracted to sex with adolescent males. The statement said that rather than paedophilia, "it would be more correct to speak of
ephebophilia; being a homosexual attraction to adolescent males" ....... "Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."The move angered many
gay rights organisations, who claimed it was an attempt by the Vatican to redefine the Church's past problems with paedophilia as problems with homosexuality.
Catholic critics of media coverage claim there has been an excessive focus on incidences of abuse and that equal or greater levels of child sexual abuse in secular contexts or other religious groups have been ignored or given minimal coverage.Being this a good reason not to put the old priests and bishops in disconfort !!!
In The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, George Weigel claims that it was the infidelity to orthodox Roman Catholic teaching, the "culture of dissent" of priests, women religious, bishops, theologians, catechists, Church bureaucrats, and activists who "believed that what the Church proposed as true was actually false" was mainly responsible for this problem. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, blamed the declining morals of the late 20th century as a cause of the high number of sexually abusive priests.Was not their "job" to preserve and defend the Moral?
Ultra-conservative Roman Catholics claimed that the Second Vatican Council itself (1962–1965) fostered a climate that encouraged priests to abuse children. The council directed an opening of the doors to meet the world. However traditional Roman Catholics believe that this led to a conversion of Roman Catholics to secularism rather than vice versa.
Others have asserted that the increased reporting of abuse in child-care institutions during this time was concomitant with rising police interest, investigation and prosecution of such crimes. As such it is not certain that a sudden "crisis of abuse" ever existed; instead the dramatic increase in reported abuse cases may simply have heralded the end of a long-term endemic problem found throughout a number of institutions, both secular and religious, prior to the introduction of quality control measures specifically aimed at preventing such abuses from occurring.Probably clerical celibacy contributed to the abuse problem by suggesting that the institution of celibacy has created a "morally superior" status that is easily misapplied by abusive priests: "The Irish Church’s prospect of a recovery is zero for as long as bishops continue blindly to toe the Vatican line of Pope Benedict XVI that a male celibate priesthood is morally superior to other sections of society.
Sexual scandals among priests, the defenders say, are a breach of the Church's discipline, not a result of it, especially since only a small percentage of priests have been implicated. Furthermore there is no data supporting a higher rate of child-oriented sexual activity among the unmarried Roman Catholic clergy than that of the married clergy of other denominations and of schoolteachers. However, for those cases for which data is available, molestation of pre-pubescent children was found to be rare. Consequently opinion remains divided on whether there is any definite link or connection between the Roman Catholic institution of celibacy and incidences of child abuse by Catholic clergy.
One specific meaning of the term "religious abuse" refers to psychological harm or manipulation inflicted on a person by using teachings or doctrines of that person’s religion. This is perpetrated by members of the same or similar faith, and includes the use of a position of authority within the religion over another person to inflict such harm.It is most prevalently directed at children and emotionally vulnerable adults, and motivations behind such abuse vary, but can be either well-intentioned or malicious.
So they use the privileged relationship they boast with God ....
Well meaning instances of such abuse are often motivated by genuine concern that the targeted person will come to physical or spiritual harm should they engage in a certain behavior or question their beliefs. The perpetrator then uses exaggerated, distorted or even false versions their teachings or their position of authority to instill intense fear and/or shame . Maliciously motivated abuse uses the same tactic, but seeks to manipulate the victim into being compliant with the perpetrator’s selfish wishes.
Even well intentioned religious abuse can have long-term psychological consequences. Causing the victim to be intensely fearful can induce that person to develop a specific phobia about the topic they were warned against, or develop a long-lasting depression. They may have an unshakable sense of shame that persists even when they have either grown up or left the church. The person can also be manipulated into avoiding a beneficial action (such as a medical treatment) or to engage in a harmful behavior.
Religiously-based psychological abuse of children is a growing area of interest in the psychological and sociological community. It can take the form of using teachings to subjugate children through fear, or imposing heavy indoctrination such that the child is taught only the beliefs and/or points of view of their particular sect (or even just that of their caregivers) and all other perspectives are stifled or kept from them. The beliefs are taught as absolute truth, with no way of ever questioning them. Psychologist Jill Mytton describes this as crushing the child's chance to form a personal morality and belief system, making them utterly reliant on their religious system and/or parents. They never learn to critically reflect on information they receive. Similarly, the use of fear and a judgmental environment (such as the concept of Hell) to control the child can be traumatic.
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