Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 16

= April 16 =

Why do Catholic priests actually do in exorcisms that make people victims in sexual abuse cases?
I understand that the intent of the exorcism seems to help the person spiritually in some way, but what I don't understand is the situations covered in the news stories about a Catholic priest who takes advantage of this and sexually abuses their own church followers. How does this even happen? Has there been anything done to prevent such sexual abuse cases? SSS (talk) 03:51, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Not all exorcists are priests. Sleigh (talk) 10:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * And if he is a Catholic priest, that doesn't mean that he's trained for performing it. See Exorcism in the Catholic Church.Hofhof (talk) 13:08, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * As for "how does it happen", child rape by authority figures is poorly reported. Children either are worried they did something wrong, or don't think they'll be believed if the they speak out, or they believe they'll be harrassed regardless of wether or not they're believed. This also explains why so many child abuse scandals don't happen until the child becomes an adult; as children they were too scared to report it.
 * There's lots of studies on this, but they're all behind academic paywalls, so here's a quote from a news article, chosen basically at random :

"It finds the longest delays in reporting occurred where alleged perpetrators were authority figures — such as teachers, priests or foster carers — with data showing the majority of these reports were made at least 10 years after the incident."
 * The Catholic church is no stranger to this kind of scandal. You can read about the history of absuse in the church, and what they're trying to do about it here : Catholic Church sexual abuse cases.

ApLundell (talk) 02:43, 17 April 2018 (UTC)


 * It's a little unclear to me how exorcisms are related to sexual abuse. Within this context, I mean; the OP seems almost to be conflating Satanic ritual abuse with Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. I'm not familiar with exorcisms commonly being used as a cover or an excuse and they're not mentioned in Catholic Church sexual abuse cases at all. I'm sure a multitude of lies and excuses have been used to cover abuse, but could we get a little context for the assertion that priests are doing this? Matt Deres (talk) 14:26, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I was watching a YouTube video, featuring a left-wing comedian who made satirical commentary on political debates. It was this comedian who mentioned a Catholic priest or some kind of Catholic-affiliated worker who engaged in a sexual abuse case with full-grown women. Basically, during an exorcism, he took advantage of the situation and sexually assaulted the women. I googled "exorcism priest sexual assault" and immediately found an article about a priest who did just that. It's probably a one-term occurrence, so that's probably why it's not written on Wikipedia yet. SSS (talk) 16:11, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The position of the Catholic Church is that exorcisms must be authorised by the hierarchy and they must be carried out in a proper manner by priests who have been trained to do them.  To facilitate this, more priests are being trained.   A conference is discussing the matter this week, , . 92.19.169.232 (talk) 14:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)