The Truth About Falsely Accused Priests

The Truth About Falsely Accused Priests | A Catholic World Report Interview with Dave Pierre, author of Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories

The accused are often presumed guilty until proven innocent, while the media distorts the narrative of child abuse in the US.

Dave Pierre is a journalist who operates TheMediaReport.com, which examines anti-Catholicism and bias in today’s media, and the author of two books,  Double Standard: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church and Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories. Dave is also a contributing writer to NewsBusters.org, a blog of the Media Research Center covering media bias. In this Catholic World Report interview, he discusses his new book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, and offers his thoughts about the media's coverage of the Catholic Church abuse narrative.

Catholic World Report: When and how did you first become interested in the Catholic clergy abuse scandals and the dominant media coverage of those scandals?

Dave Pierre: When I was living in Los Angeles, I became a contributing writer to NewsBusters.org, the popular media-bias blog of the Media Research Center. I would frequently look at the Los Angeles Times. A number of years ago, I noticed that the paper published a very large, 3,800-word piece on the front page about decades-old abuses that were alleged to have been committed by Catholic clergy in remote villages of Alaska. Indeed, many of the stories were heart-wrenching, painful, and tragic. However, months later, the shocking story of a Southern California teacher who may have molested as many as 200 children was buried on page B3.

I soon began to notice a trend: the Times was often giving front-page coverage to stories about Catholic priests alleged to have committed abuse decades ago. Meanwhile, arrests of public school teachers for abuse happening today were often not reported or buried in the “news briefs” section.

The double standard was glaring.

Catholic World Report: Some Catholics are very upset about the way the mainstream media has covered the scandals since the 1990s; others say the media has done the Church a great service in exposing cases of abuse and attempts to cover up those cases. What would you say about those two positions? What do you think of the media coverage, especially by the major newspapers and news outlets?

Read the entire interview on www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

Comments

[LJ]

I am hoping that the magnitude of the scandal at Penn State will break this conspiracy of silence wide open. Hopefully the media will not be able to shuffle it aside. Once those flood-gates are open there may be some balance in coverage and people will be able to reflect with some objectivity on the priest sex-abuse scandal.

If, as Dave Pierre points out, the moving around of educators in response to sex abuse allegations is true, the obvious parallel to the policy of Bishops in the past should be apparent to everyone. Perhaps then, some credibility might be given to the point that, however wrong and wrong-headed we see it now to be, the advice given in those days by the psychiatric community was that a pedophile was curable and simply needed treatment.

That the Bishops did not treat it first and foremost as a moral issue is at the heart of the problem I think, nevermind what advice they were receiving. That is the fundamental difference between the Catholic Church and any other institution. The Church has, and has claimed the moral high ground. We Catholics know her to be the body of Christ. That she could be so enmeshed with the standards of the world as to lose her way at the episcopal level with respect to something as clearly immoral as child abuse is deeply troubling and speaks of a spiritual deficiency.

As Phil Lawler pointed out, this aspect of the entire business was the second scandal, but hardly yet addressed head-on by the Church. Perhaps the Holy Father is doing something about this in his measured way, in his appointments and so forth, but those in the episcopal conferences seem to have no enthusiasm for the subject at all.

[Dorothy Stein]

I’m so glad to see you giving this attention to the horrible injustice of falsely accused Catholic priests. I have read David F. Pierre’s book, and he has demonstrated a courage and commitment to justice that too many Catholics take for granted in our Church. It is not always there and when priests are accused, they face a lynch mob from SNAP, the news media, and their own diocesan authorities. I have been reading about one of the priests featured in David Pierre’s book. Father Gordon MacRae writes weekly for an outstanding website at http://www.TheseStoneWalls.com. It is the face of injustice that the Church needs to see and heed.

[Peter l]

SNAP refuses to obey court order for abuse documents.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/snap-refuses-to-obey-court-order-for-abuse-documents/

Seems like SNAP has something to hide.