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Priest Shrink: I Saw Abusers Reinstated
Excerpt:
For years, the Catholic Church has quietly sent
priests accused of sexual transgressions to psychiatric centers
for treatment, many of them affiliated with the
church.
Dr. Leslie Lothstein has treated more than 300
Catholic priests at one of those centers, the Institute of Living in Hartford,
Conn.
(The institute no longer has an official relationship
with the church.)
Lothstein, who is not Catholic himself, says many
of his patients have sexual problems. And he says the church
does not always follow psychologists' directives
about patients who are treated.
"My experience was that if it was said to one
of the clergy who was in charge ... that this person needs to have
much more supervision, they would say, 'Oh yes,
yes, it'll be there, they'll have supervision,' " Lothstein tells NPR.
"But then what happened was they went back to
their normal, everyday work. And in going back to it, we learned
much later that they didn't have the supervision."...
One of the biggest challenges in treating priests,
Lothstein says, is that they don't have the same kind of sexual experiences
-- or history of talking about such experiences
-- that an ordinary adult may have. "Many of the priests tend to be
psychosexually immature," he says. "They've never
taken a course in healthy sexuality."
He says some of them have gone into minor seminary
at age 14 and developed "a sense of self without
having appropriate lines of dating, meeting other
people, experimenting with touch, kissing, ordinary sexuality."
Benny the Rat will continue to deny, deny, deny
- what choice does he have?
If he asks the rapists to stand down, the Catholic
Church will go under.