Tag Archives | Abuse
Report: Thousands Of Irish Women Were Enslaved In Catholic Laundries Which Ended In 1996
They were being punished for being orphans or single mothers, for committing petty crimes, or being perceived as rebellious in some way. Via ABC News:
Ireland’s government oversaw workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once held thousands of women and teenage girls in unpaid labor and usually against their will, a fact-finding report concluded Tuesday, establishing state involvement in the country’s infamous Magdalene Laundries for the first time.
Opposition leaders demanded that Prime Minister Enda Kenny offer an official apology for the state’s failure to enforce labor laws and human rights standards in the 10 Magdalene Laundries, and to pledge to establish a taxpayer-funded compensation program for survivors. The report found that 10,012 women were committed to the workhouses from 1922 to the closure of the last two laundries in 1996.
The government since 2002 has paid more than $1.3 billion to more than 13,000 people who suffered abuse in other Catholic-run workhouses and orphanages but explicitly excluded former Magdalene residents, contending these were privately run institutions with negligible state involvement.
An Eye for an Eye? Jerry Sandusky, Male Survivors, and Prison Rape
Jamie Utt writes at Change From Within:
Trigger Warning: The following article has content that could prove triggering for survivors of sexual violence.
As the verdict was handed down that Jerry Sandusky, convicted child rapist and former Penn State football coach, would spend the rest of his life in prison, the twitterverse exploded!
(it’s notable that this came from a widely-followed sports reporter)
Now, I have to admit. While I consider myself on the road to understanding peace through pacifism, few things make me want to inflict violence on another more than violence against children, particularly sexual violence. It robs children of their innocence and scars them for life; any person that would inflict such violence on a child is seriously disturbed, and they deserve punishment.
But is wishing rape upon those who have committed atrocities the measure by which we should understand justice?
One of the great failures of our so-called “justice” system is that there are virtually no resources or effort put toward healing and rehabilitation. In short, restorative justice is all but absent from the U.S.
CopBlock Founder Faces 21 Years in Prison on “Wiretapping” Charges for Filming Police
According to court documents, Adam “Ademo” Mueller, journalist and co-host of nationally syndicated radio talk show Free Talk Live, has been indicted on three counts of felony wiretapping. The charges are a result of a vlog Mueller posted on CopBlock.org about an incident involving alleged police misconduct, which featured recorded interviews of on-duty public officials.
The Violence Of God
Julie Shoshana Pfau, a graduate student in religion at Emory University, and David R. Blumenthal, who teaches and writes on constructive Jewish theology, medieval Judaism, Jewish mysticism, and holocaust studies, discuss “How can you relate to an abusive God in a positive way?” at CrossCurrents:
Introduction
In 1993, I published my post-shoah theology entitled Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Westminster John Knox). The book did not have the impact on Jewish and Christian theologians, on psychotherapists, or on holocaust survivors that it should have had. The reasons for this are complicated and I have tried to explain them elsewhere. However, the book has been read very steadily by survivors of child abuse and occasional doctoral students from whom I receive a steady stream of letters. The exchange below is a very good example and I am grateful to Julie Pfau for her willingness to publish these letters, as well as for her forthrightness in expressing herself.
