A minor girl in Kerala was raped and impregnated, allegedly by a priest, and everything in the investigation points to a system that not only allowed this crime to happen, but actively tried to cover it up.
But the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council is completely blind to this problem in their backyard. Instead of taking steps to ensure that priests don’t get away with the crime, the council has conveniently said that this case is an ‘exception’ among the 9,033 catholic priests in Kerala.
In a reply to TNM’s queries on the issue, Father Paul Thelekat of the Bishops' Council said:
The feeble attempt at denouncing the crime is lost in the justification offered by the council for the behaviour of ‘some’. The reply gets more bizarre as the council then puts the blame for sexual violence and child sexual abuse squarely on ‘consumerism’. He added:
The council is clearly attempting to wash its hands off and ignore the systemic abuse that a minor faced under their watch. The survivor was studying in a school attached to the church where the accused, Father Robin, was a priest.
He allegedly raped her in his room multiple times, and when he impregnated her, he reportedly tried to cover it up. After the girl, secretly delivered the child at a hospital run by the church, the new-born was taken to an orphanage without the minor’s knowledge.
Child welfare officials only came to know about the case on the basis of a tip-off, as the hospital had not informed the police either. However, when TNM reached out to the hospital, George, the Public Relations Officer denied that they tried to hide the incident.
The Bishops Council’s reply comes just a day after a Malayalam magazine Sunday Shalom tried to paint this as an isolated incident. “There are many people who do good deeds, how come people are not seeing that? Why are good things not said about these people? To ridicule all priests in the name of all mistakes committed by one or two priests is saddening the entire community,” the magazine said.
The magazine does not stop at that. “Even Judas was Jesus’s disciple, and today we are walking behind this disciple. Those who need to be isolated, should be isolated, but let’s not throw mud at those who have not done any mistakes. We can proudly call every priest as a virtue we have earned, allow them to walk confidently in their robes,” it said.
Making a false equivalence, the magazine added: “Kerala is a land where a biological father has raped and impregnated his daughter. Does that mean all fathers should be castrated?” (sic)
But what use are ‘guidelines’ when the Church refuses to recognise that this wasn’t an isolated incident, but a textbook definition of systemic abuse?
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