Abuse Victims Want To Meet Pope

Abuse victims send letter request a meeting with the Pope:

Victims of abuse by a former priest yesterday submitted a letter to the Vatican, asking for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI and urging him to apologise to all victims of clergy abuse.

The Rev Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest, lawyer and longtime advocate for sex abuse victims, entered one of the Vatican's gates to deliver the letter, which also asks the pope to dismiss any official involved in covering up the scandal and to instruct bishops to cooperate in the investigation of suspected cases.

The appeal was signed by Ann Jyono and Nancy Sloan, two victims of defrocked Irish priest Oliver O'Grady, who admits molesting as many as 25 children while a parish priest in California. He served seven years in prison for abusing two brothers and was deported to Ireland in 2001.

The Vatican had no immediate comment.
"I've often said that it's soul murder; their souls are taken away from them by the priests that do it, but what makes it worse is the way they are treated by their bishops," Doyle said.

Victims of clergy abuse charge that bishops covered up the scandal, ignoring the victims' complaints and protecting paedophile priests by moving them from parish to parish each time new cases surfaced.

"Until they acknowledge us and help us to weed out the bad people in the church ... how can I heal?" Jyono said as she broke down in tears in front of the Vatican gates. "I want my faith back but I need their help."

It is a difficult road for recovery if one has lost their sense of faith.

Oprah's Demonization of Sexual Abusers

I have posted some information from Oprah's web site on this site because I believe the information is good for those whom have had no experience with sexual abuse - and, hopefully, they never will.But, I strongly disagree with Oprah's Child Predator Watch List. It is a horrible, horrible misuse of her fame and does nothing but demonize those in the communities of the world - not the North America - who need help to stop the cycle of abuse.

I respect Oprah and what she is trying to do, but her statement of "enough, enough, enough" is doing nothing to improve the situation. I agree, there are sick people out there. And, what I mean by sick, are people who may abuse others, but they themselves require help as most of them were abused. Abusers do not just "pop out of the ground" - they are created by abuse. Yet, her program dehumanizes the abusers and paints them are nothing more than devil creatures, waiting in dark hallways to pounce upon the weak. The Predator Watch program doesn't address the fact that 95% of abusers know their victims - and most are close family (parents and relatives).

I think that activisim out of anger and frustration is wrong.

Oprah's heart is in the right place, but her television program is not the correct medium to talk about abuse.

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A Teacher Named Bobo

A teacher nicknamed "Bobo" was arrested recently:

Meet Deanna Bobo. The 37-year-old Arkansas woman is the 3,496th teacher to be arrested this year on charges that she had sex with an underage student (in this case, a 14-year-old boy). Bobo, a special ed teacher at Raymond E. Wells Junior High School, is facing a felony sexual assault count for her alleged encounters earlier this year with the student. Bobo, who was arrested last week and released on a $10,000 bond, is pictured below in a Sebastian County Adult Detention Center mug shot. According to an arrest affidavit, cops found sexually explicit e-mails between Bobo and the boy when they executed a search warrant at her home, which she shares with husband Rusty Bobo, an oilfield mechanic, and the couple's five children. As a condition of Bobo's release, a Circuit Court judge ordered that she avoided any contact with the boy and his family. While Bobo has been put on a paid suspension, her bio remains online at the Wells Junior High School web site. It notes that she has a bachelor's degree in early childhood education and has been certified as an "early childhood instructional specialist."