Nun
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Nuns are forcing the Catholic Church to face another kind of sexual scandal among its clergy: the abuse of “religious sisters by priests and bishops,” the Associated Press reports.
The big picture: The Church has a rocky history of abuse of young children, but the abuse of sisters is a matter the community has “yet to come to terms with.” And in the era of #MeToo, no stone is being left unturned.
What’s happening
This isn’t a new problem. However, sisters are now going public with their stories around the world, the AP reports.
- The Vatican received a report on these issues in Africa in the 1990s, but no serious action was taken.
Nuns used to be considered “safe” sexual partners, per the AP, for men in the Church who were concerned about contracting a sexually transmitted disease if he went to women “in the general population.”
A leading expert on clergy sexual abuse, Karlijn Demasure, told the AP, priests “can always say […]
I’ve been hearing a long history of stories of abuse and sexual harassment of women and boys coming from many different religious groups and that’s not excluding Buddhists, shamans, Hindus, etc. The need for deviant abusive sexual and emotional power over children is horrifying. And unfortunately, these experiences are more often than not the outcome of the abusers own childhood experiences where love was lacking.