March 29, 2005
WHERE THE BOYS ARE:
Boy Scouts Executive Surrenders in Fort Worth on a Child Pornography Charge (RALPH BLUMENTHAL, 3/30/05, NY Times)
The longtime program director of the Boy Scouts of America and chairman of its Youth Protection Task Force has surrendered on a federal charge of receiving and distributing child pornography on the Internet, the United States attorney's office in Fort Worth said Tuesday.The director, Douglas Sovereign Smith Jr., 61, who was put on leave last month and quietly retired March 1, was expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to the single felony count filed by federal prosecutors, a crime that can carry a prison term of 5 to 20 years, said Kathy Colvin, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney's office.
Ms. Colvin said that a prosecutor's filing, rather than a grand jury indictment, was commonly used to charge a defendant when a guilty plea was anticipated. The filing charges Mr. Smith with knowingly receiving and sending "computer images which contained photographs of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct." [...]
Mr. Shields said the Scouts learned of the investigation in a visit by agents from the Department of Homeland Security in February and put Mr. Smith on administrative leave. "Shortly thereafter he chose to retire," Mr. Shields said.
Ms. Colvin said the investigation had been carried out under Operation Predator, an initiative announced in 2003 by the Department of Homeland Security "to protect children from pornographers, child prostitution rings, Internet predators, alien smugglers, human traffickers and other criminals." The operation's investigative agency is the department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which coordinates enforcement actions from what it calls its CyberSmuggling Center in Fairfax, Va.
It has been comforting for folk to assume that the scandals of the Catholic clergy are a unique function of its celibacy. This, however, misapprehends the problem. Men don't develop an attraction to boys because they are priests; men who are attracted to boys become priests because it will provide them access. The Church needs to do a better job of weeding such men out, but already does better than other institutions that likewise offer access. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2005 11:34 PM
The Catholic Church needs to weed out the secular humanists that have infiltrated the Church. Unfortunately, it is that group which is weeding out the truly religious and attracting the type of men who would molest boys.
Posted by: Vince at March 30, 2005 1:04 AMAnyone got a millstone and a large body of water?
Posted by: Mike Morley at March 30, 2005 6:57 AMSeveral years ago, I started doing "teacher arrested" searches on google news at least once a week.
Within a year, I had over 125 cases. Most were child porn and child molestation. Some for dealing drugs. A few for prostitution. In a period of 3 or 4 months, half a dozen Clark County (Las Vegas) teachers were busted on child related charges. The New York City school system estimated one child a day was molested by an employee of the system.
The oddest case was a teacher in Arizona who shot herself in the leg in her empty classroom to draw attention to what she saw as a lack of security at the school.
Started the search because several years before, my job involved intensive cross-country travel. Always read the local papers and noticed how many such cases there were but I had never seen them mentioned in the national media.
And yes, there were a few at religious schools. But not many.
Try it searching now and then on "teacher arrested"
Posted by: David at March 30, 2005 8:10 AMEvery now and then try a google news search on "Teacher arrested".
Did it at least twice a week in 2001 and found over 120 cases--mostly involving child porn or molestation.
The study above underestimates the problem if anything.
Posted by: David at March 30, 2005 8:16 AMIt's a simple function of Willie Sutton's wisdom.
Posted by: oj at March 30, 2005 8:26 AMVince is correct. Many of the most liberal of Catholics end up as a "religious" particularly nuns.
Also, it's not just boys that are servers now. Girls have been acting as "altar boys" for years.
Posted by: Bartman at March 30, 2005 9:42 AMMr. Smith's case is different, to be fair. He was not a Scoutmaster, working with boys. He was an administrator, dealing with adults in planning events.
He's not accused of molestation, but of trafficking in child pornography (not that there's anything right about that).
Posted by: old maltese at March 30, 2005 5:28 PMDo you really think he only looked?
Posted by: oj at March 30, 2005 7:08 PMMaybe, now is the time for Catholics to look at the seminaries and those who run them, to see how and why some homosexual men are drawn to those seminaries and trained there in the arts and sciences of molestation of boys.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at March 31, 2005 9:23 AMBecause there's access to boys.
Posted by: oj at March 31, 2005 10:57 AMAnd girls, which would require that the priesthood attract heterosexuals.
No doubt it does, sometimes.
It would be easier just to acknowledge that sex is a good thing, though, wouldn't it?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 1, 2005 2:28 AMThat's not what the Catholics taught me.
They taught that the best thing was no sex.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 1, 2005 2:49 PMYes. But not for all.
Posted by: oj at April 1, 2005 2:52 PM