Last week, the United Nations criticized the Vatican for what the “Committee Against Torture” panel has referred to as an inadequate response to child sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Once again, the UN has resurrected the hyped-up fear over so-called “pedophile priests,” while ignoring the ongoing epidemic of teachers having sex with students.
In February, the New York Times noted that in a report issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN “called on the Vatican to remove all child abusers from its ranks, report them to law enforcement and open the church’s archives so that bishops and other officials who concealed crimes could be held accountable.”
Not surprisingly, the report also condemned the Catholic church “for its opposition to contraception, homosexuality and abortion in cases of child rape and incest.”
As observed by Anne Hendershott at Crisis Magazine,
“For more than four decades, progressives have been engaged in a battle with the Catholic hierarchy over issues including abortion, sexual morality and homosexuality. The re-manufactured image of the pedophile priest and his craven bishop who has covered up his despicable deeds points to the need for a ‘new and improved’ Catholic Church.”
Hendershott, by the way, was subject to a particularly intrusive IRS audit in 2010. Coincidence?
The disproportionate focus on misdeeds of the Catholic church ignores the very real epidemic of teachers having inappropriate sexual contact with students. The mainstream media also completely ignores this epidemic, as the daily stories of pedophile teachers reported in the local news rarely receive national coverage.
As reported at the Boston Globe last week, the latest UN report cited several cases, including that of Father Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, a priest “who returned to his native India after being charged with molesting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota in 2004 and is currently being pursued by American prosecutors…”
2004?
How about this week?
Middle school guidance counselor Brian McBride admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old student. The victim’s dad had to be escorted from the courtroom after an “outburst.” Sadly, the mainstream media will not discuss this story, or the numerous others that are reported across America – as well as the United Kingdom – every single day.
But the mainstream media has been very interested in Father Jeyapaul’s case, as ABC News, the New York Times, and CNN and many, many others have all featured the priest prominently in exclusive news articles.
CNN even flew one of their reporters out to interview the priest:
Yet just this week, it was reported:
- Substitute teacher Brian Dinh Nguyen was ordered to serve three months in jail for “assault and battery,” and lost his teaching privileges (in Virginia) for three years. He still faces three counts of abduction, aggravated sexual battery and indecent liberties with students.
- Intermediate School music teacher Matthew Puterbaugh was “charged with 661 counts of child pornography earlier this year was arrested again Friday for making secret videos of students’ underwear, touching children inappropriately, and for a three-year sexual relationship with one girl that began when she was in the seventh grade…”
- In Georgia, “a grand jury has indicted the county school superintendent, one of her assistants and the McIntosh Academy high school principal on misdemeanor charges of failure to report child abuse” after obstructing an investigation of math teacher Lori Carmichael Quigley, who was charged with having sex with three students.
- Teacher Emma Painter lost her teaching certificate for two years after “she attempted to influence the testimony of a student believed to be the victim of a 2009 sexual assault by an assistant field hockey coach.”
- Teacher Robert Craig Varnell was sentenced to 14 years in prison for sexually abusing a male student for four years starting when the boy was 13-years-old.
- Substitute teacher Jarrod Acquistapace was sentenced to two years, ten months for “unlawfully engaging in sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl last summer.”
- Teacher’s aide Stephanie Mariskanish was “charged with four counts of having sex with a 14-year-old student.”
- Math teacher Jessica Streeper was arrested for alleged sexual contact with a 14-year-old male student.
- Special education teacher Patrik Ian Arsenault was “charged with sexually exploiting two boys” ages 6 and 7, and is expected to plead guilty. This case also involves teacher David W. Morissette, who was charged “…with two counts of unlawful sexual contact with a relative, a girl between the ages of 11-14 between July 2010 and March 2013, and with two counts of possession of sexually explicit materials depicting children under age 12.”
- Despite his history of “inappropriate contact with students,” high school teacher Gregg Martin Jensen was hired by Liberty High School, where the 54-year-old sexually abused a 16-year-old student.
- Substitute teacher Jerry Love was sentenced to six months in prison after having had sex with a 16-year-old student.
- High school teacher Joseph Scherma is being charged with raping two male juvenile relatives.
- Middle School teacher Joel Fowler was charged with soliciting a 14-year-old for sex.
- High school teacher Derrick Nesby is “accused of being sexually involved with a male student.”
- Middle school teacher Sarah M. Raymo is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she is fit for trial after having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student.
- High school teacher Andre Brown “admitted to sexually abusing a 17-year-old student.”
- High School teacher’s aide Billy Wayne Cooper accepted a plea deal “that dismissed two first-degree sex abuse charges and downgraded a remaining charge” after having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student.
Where is the United Nations on the stories above, which represent only a sample of this week’s news stories surrounding predatory teachers? Where is the mainstream media on this epidemic?
Tom Hoopes asked the question in 2006:
“In the face of the evidence of a widespread epidemic of abuse fed by a new morality that winks at child molestation, why is the Church the only institution under the microscope?”
Pedophiles, it seems, are only evil if they are Catholic.
