Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Dave Pierre is a big fan of the Catholic Church quietly paying clergy accused of sexual abuse to go away quietly as "fast and economical," never mind that such payments conveniently excluded any sort of accountability or justice.
Paying the victims who accused them, well, that's another story.
In a Nov. 27 NewsBusters post, Pierre proclaimed his distress at Boston Cardinal Seán O'Malley appearing on "60 Minutes" to talk about the church's sex abuse crisis:
While the media has showered O'Malley with praise for his management of sex abuse cases, we have actually been troubled with the way he has handled cases in Boston by paying sizable sums to settle questionable claims.
In the spring of 2012, O'Malley's archdiocese paid out large settlements related to accusations of abuse against two priests. However, as we carefully chronicled at the time, there is substantial reason to believe that the payments were not justified.
Both accused priests were long ago dead, neither man had even a hint of impropriety when they were alive, and these were the only claims ever made against them. The archdiocese's payoffs understandably infuriated the friends and families of both tarnished priests.
Pierre's "careful chronicling," it should be noted, lacks any evidence that the abuse didn't occur; he merely rants about "unproven allegations against previously unblemished priests who are now deceased and unable to defend themselves" and insists "our priests deserve much better than this" and wails about what "the families, friends, and colleagues of these accused men now must endure."
By contract, Pierre shows little concern for what the victim deserves and must endure. Instead, he baselessly besmirches them by baselessly suggesting they were only out to scam the church of money.
Pierre then moves on to attack Cardinal O'Malley for something completely unrelated, supposedly excessive "salaries for lay leadership in the Archdiocese of Boston." He concludes: "So the lesson here is that if a Church official is willing to criticize the Church over the topic of sex abuse, the media will fête him as a media darling no matter what he has actually done as a Church official."
The other lesson, it appears, is that Pierre will attack anyone who admits there has been a longstanding problem of abuse in the Catholic Church, and anyone who does so -- even victims -- must be thrown under the bus to save the church.
