Code of Silence: Religion and the Media

We all know about the Catholics, after all the media has taken an interest (as it should) – and I would maintain that this was done primarily to deflect the attention away from Iraq.  After all stories of child abuse, more often than not sexual, abound among religious organizations, yet why did they just pick the one organization.  My guess is that, foreign rule and anti-Catholic sentiment aside, it is the biggest one and therefore had the ability to occupy the news ad infinitum, which it did.  Yet other instances occur with alarming regularity, which are little more than a fleeting blip in the media universe.

What is most sickening within these moral bastions is that victims are not allowed to discuss abuse within their own organizations, let alone the outside world.  Those that do are punished.

When Fannie found out about the CYS visit, she and Anna went with 13 other kids to the home of John Yoder, an Amish dentist who lived an hour and a half away in the town of Punxsutawney. Yoder’s living room had a recliner with a tin pan and some needles next to it. Anna watched as the other kids each had one or two bad teeth pulled. When it was her turn, Yoder shot some novocaine into her upper gum. She shook her head and told him that two of her lower teeth had cavities. He shot the lower gum, and asked Fannie which teeth should go. Anna’s mother answered, “Take them all,” and Yoder pulled–along the upper gum, along the lower gum, until every tooth was gone. “After he had pulled the last tooth,” Anna remembered, “my mom looked at me and said, ‘I guess you won’t be talking anymore.’ “

Leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses are taking steps to excommunicate a Western Kentucky man and three other church members who have publicly criticized what they say is their church’s secretive handling of child-molestation cases.

Often it’s schools that provide a safe haven for the perpetrators, especially when the children in question have had troubled lives to begin with.

The state also contends that cadets have been struck; forced to or permitted to beat or strike other children; denied proper medical treatment for illnesses or injuries; shocked with a cattle prod or stun gun; forced to exercise in the sun without water; punished for requesting water; locked in a footlocker for hours; and subjected to racial, ethnic and other slurs.

These cases are among almost all Christian faiths from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, to the Baptists, the Anglicans, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, etc, etc…  I have my computer full of this stuff.

Somehow they manage to get away with this, with their immoral leaders trying to force their regressive culture onto the rest of us – encouraging violence against those that disagree.  Even if a lot of this is in the public domain, it is still hushed by the media.  I would go so far as to say the media is criminally negligent.

It’s time we use their tactics against them.  We need to break them by getting them into the news on a regular basis.  We need to picket their facilities, and draw attention to their crimes until they are entirely discredited.  Until then, let’s just say they’re the ones with the momentum.