A confluence of news events the past few days shows how little our world has really changed when it comes to powerful, influential men avoiding consequences for their sexual predilections, perversions and abuses.
Reading a Wednesday New York Times piece on now former IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I was struck by this paragraph:
One former I.M.F. official said that, had Mr. Strauss-Kahn been a less senior person, he might been fired or at least “sent to Siberia” because of the affair with his underling. He survived an investigation, in part, this person said, because the culture at the I.M.F. dictated “no rules” for the managing director and because there was little appetite to rid the agency of a charismatic and effective leader when an international financial crisis looming.
Too powerful, too valuable, too important to face consequences for his abuse and exploitation of a woman who relied on his good will to keep her job. (Not to mention the report from 2007 of a 2003 incident involving Strauss-Kahn trying to force himself on a 22-year-old woman.)
Mere character flaws.
Well, this time Strauss-Kahn may have gone too far.
This sordid tale comes on the heels of an official Catholic Church Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith letter to bishops released Monday that suggests -- but not requires -- bishops to "cooperate" with civil authorities when abuse cases are discovered.
As a story in the Times about the new guidelines notes:
But the recommendations are not binding in church law and do not spell out any enforcement procedures or punishments for bishops who have been found to have violated church law.
...
Father Lombardi said the Vatican could not issue universal requirements for mandatory reporting to civil authorities because it also operated in countries with repressive governments. “Each reality is different, culturally and from the point of view of different countries’ laws,” he said.
Laughable, pathetic and sad.
But not as laughable, pathetic and sad as this story from Wednesday that summarizes the results of a five-year study commissioned by U.S. bishops to uncover what caused the Church's sexual abuse crisis.
... the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.
Of course, for, quite literally, centuries, the Catholic Church hierarchy -- and even, in many cases, the faithful -- have protected sexually abusive priests from the consequences of their sexual predilections, perversions and abuses because priests were considered to be holy men, above the normal rules of law.
Why were there so many cases of sexual abuse by priests ordained in the 1960s and 1970s? Because people started reporting the abuse to authorities and media outside the Church beginning in the late 1980s and into the 1990s and the first decade of the new century.
Hard to believe it took this panel of "experts" five years and $1.8 million to come up with precisely the wrong answer that conveniently buries two centuries of shame in the U.S.
But every now and then, in cases like that of Strauss-Kahn or the Catholic Church, an old maxim applies: "You fucked up. You got caught"
And that's because, luckily, a few people have been strong enough and fearless enough not to back down, not to be intimidated by the power conferred on these men.
That said, powerful men will continue to abuse their positions to exploit the vulnerable, whether they be children, hotel maids or underlings who fear for their own well-being.
Some things never change.