Thestar.ie, the star, irish
daily star, sex crime, peaodphiles, rapists, journophiles, todays star, Mondays
star
Ireland's Most Evil, we expose Ireland's Deviant Journophiles
Journophile Register
Michael O’Toole
Patrick O’Connell
Keith Falkiner
John O’Keefe
The Star PERV Central
Journophiles who write for
The Star and other lurid British tabloids are facilitating sexual crime and
rape as they normalise such sexual crime with their daily sexual objectification
of women and children, by means of their advertised perverted sex chat lines,
deviant sex related articles, and pornographic imagery, anyone buying such
British tabloid filth are facilitating sex crime in Ireland, they are defacto
sex criminals. British tabloids are bought in their thousands each day in Irish
Prisons by people convicted of heinous offences, as The Star and other British
Tabloids allow such felons to normalise sexual criminality and allow them to fulfill their deviant fantasies each day. The Star was purchased each and every
day by Larry Murphy while he was in prison, The Star was the media that feed
Larry’s fantasties, as those who write such filth, write to feed the appetite
of deviants, for who else would read such lurid, voyeuristic filth only
perverts.
Below former Star Editor forced to resign after publishing pornographic images of a young woman.
Star Editor forced to Resign after publishing Pornographic images of Young Woman
The Media and Sexual Crime
As more and more journalists
across the modern world come before the courts and tribunals of inquiry,
accused of heinous and outrageous crimes, we look here at the role of the media
in terms of facilitating, participating and encouraging criminality. In Ireland
we have had daily STAR journalist, Ian Bailey accused of murder, we have had
Irish Times journalist, Tom Humphries exposed as an alleged paedophile, we have RTE and
other journalists exposed as liars and defamers. The Editor of the Star forced to resign after publishing pornographic images of a young woman when she was on holidays. To join the National Union of
Journalists (NUJ) in Ireland, all you need is a proposal and seconder from
people like Ian Bailey or Tom Humphries or any of the many drug snorting,
alcohol consuming journophiles around the country. We had the bizarre situation
in Monaghan Town where RUC informer Owen/Eoin Smyth created a proxy journalist
in Patrick ‘the dwarf’ Tierney so that Smyth could send out press releases to
pursue vindictive campaigns against good and decent people. Both Smyth and
Tierney are now persona non grata.
Star Editor Ger Colleran who secretly paid €400 to a convicted sex offender in 2005
John Muncie (2000) sets the
media and public’s attitude to crime, into context, when he tells us that:
Any cursory glance at
television programme listings, the contents of mass circulation newspapers or
the shelves of fiction in book shops will confirm the extent to which an
audience perceives crime not just as a social problem but as a major sourse of
amusement and diversion, the way in which we enjoy violence, humiliation and
hurt casts doubt on the universal applicability of harm as always connoting
trouble, fear, loss and so on. For participants, too, the pleasure in creating
harm, or doing wrong or breaking boundaries is also part of the equation and
needs to be thought through (p.225).
Prof. Paul O’Mahony (1996)
goes further in addressing the media and crime, when he says:
Sections of the media never
tire of reflecting a fearful message of crime back to the public and amplifying
it through selective reporting, sensational headlines and frequently
inflammatory editorialising. For most part the media rhetoric of fear and moral
panic is built on isolated cases taken out of the broader context of crime in
Ireland. Traditional barriers of good taste and reticence have been broken
down. As the parameters of the permissible have expended some sections of the
media have developed a reprehensible, approach which is sensational and
voyeuristic. Supposedly factual accounts and purportedly serious analyses and
comment are often exaggerated, unsubstantiated by any reliable supporting
evidence, and intended to provoke hysterical response (p.167).
This manufacturing of
hysterical responses guillotines public and political debate and pushes certain
weak politicians towards quick fix and usually harsh and ill considered
repressive and punitive legislation, the results of which are more damaging to
society in the long term. Brenda O’ Brien says:
I have always said that the
media have played a positive role in helping us to come to terms with child
abuse, but there is a real danger that they will become intoxicated with their
own power (Irish Times. 2002).
This positive/negative role
played by the media in relation to child sexual abuse was picked up by Bishop
Willie Walsh when he said:
Can I ask the media to be
aware of the danger that it might use its power to occupy that oppressive and
uncompassionate role which hopefully the Catholic Church has vacated or at
least begun to vacate (Irish Times.2002).
Psychotherapist, Marie
Keenan said of sex offenders, alleged or real, and the way the media treats
them:
They were constructed as
non-persons and icons of evil. Labels turn people into nouns and hence the
paedophile is born (Irish Times.2002).
Marie Keenan was critical of
the media’s role in this demonization and its indifference to families of
offenders by the repetition of cases and repeated use of photographs of
abusers. In the majority of child sexual abuse cases the victim/s are from the
same family as the abuser and in high profile cases lurid reporting by what has
become known as Journophiles[1] can have a devastating impact on innocent
members of the extended family. However, we must also remember that many of
these Journophiles have no interest in the victims in these cases and are
simply reporting sensational headlines in order that they can sell the
paperback book they will publish from the transcripts of the trial.
Certain media reporting can
also see grave injustice done to the victims alleged or actual in such cases.
In 1994 the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed a conviction which had led to a
fourteen year sentence, because newspaper articles and pictures that were
published during the trial period, which named the Defendant, were likely to
prejudice the jury against him. In 1994, Mr Justice Kelly find the Star £10,000
for publishing a report that did not reflect what had gone on in Court and was
neither ‘fair or true’. This report led to the dismissal of the jury. In 2002
the reporting of a case appearing before Mr Justice, John Neilan at Mullingar
District Court, relating to a charge of false imprisonment and sexual assault
of a child, Mr Justice Neilan said of an interview with the alleged victim’s
family on RTE:
It was outrageous and a
nauseating matter (Irish Independent.2002).
In the case of Tim Allen a
celebrity Chef and the first person to be ‘sentenced’ as a result of Operation
Amethyst[2], the trial Judge said he had to take into account the substantial
media coverage surrounding the case. The Tim Allen case caused ‘muted’ outcry
as he was given 240 hours of community service and agreed to pay £40,000 to a
children’s charity. Mr Allen had paid for and down loaded one thousand pictures
of children from as young as five being raped (Irish Times. 2003). These acts
of legal and moral courage by members of the judiciary to face down the
bullying tactics of certain sections of the media and reactionary politicians
are the exception rather than the rule.
What influence can be put
upon a jury by even minimal pre-trial publicity is impossible to measure; however,
we can be certain that many accused persons have been denied their
Constitutional right to a fair trial due to accesses by certain sections of the
media. This is particularly the case in provincial towns in the Irish Republic
where serious crimes are tried before the Circuit Court. Crawford (1997)
reminds us that:
An assertion of community at
a local level can be beautifully conciliatory, socially nuanced and
constructive but it can also be parochial, intolerant, oppressive and unjust
(p.294).
Accesses by the media can
impugn a convicted person’s ability to seek and receive rehabilitative care
when entering the prison system and can destroy the reputation of an acquitted
person. This commitment to a fair trial, as set out in the Irish Constitution,
Bunreacht na hEireann, and International conventions, was confirmed by Mrs
Justice Denham of the Supreme Court in 1993, when she stated:
Article 40.3 incorporated a
right to fairness of procedures which incorporated the requirement of Trial by
jury unprejudiced by pre-trial publicity…the right to a fair trial was a
fundamental Constitutional right and was superior to the communities right to prosecute
(O’Mahony.1996.p.11).
A small number of
politicians have not been silent on the matter of accesses by the media,
although such disquiet has not been followed through by legislation. The
establishment of the Press Complaints Commission is a small step in the right
direction, however, when a person’s freedom is at stake no stone must be left
unturned in order to guarantee a fair trial to an accused person. On the 4th of
May, 2001, Donnie Cassidy, the leader of the Senate at that time said:
The rights of citizens were
being eroded by some sections of the media and the Oireachtas would have to be
courageous in addressing this problem.
Mr Maurice Manning, the Fine
Gael Leader of the Seanad responded to Mr Cassidy by saying:
I would like to draw
attention to the fact that this very morning one criminal trial cannot go ahead
because of the antics of some newspapers yesterday (Irish Times.2001).
In an article in The Irish
Times (2003) Fintan O’Toole gave an excellent analysis of the negative role
played by some media in the murder trial of Catherine Nevin. O’ Toole concludes
this article by saying:
The media industry, which rightly
demands that others account for their use of power, has a lot to account for
(p.16).
The jury is not the only
consideration where the accesses of the media are concerned. In 2001 a Circuit
Court Judge, ordered the media from his Court as he sentenced a man found
guilty of sexual offences. The judge stated that his reasons for ordering the
media from his court was that, he felt the presence of the media would
influence his sentencing of the accused man. While this decision by the Circuit
Court judge was later over turned by the High Court, it opened up the somewhat
muted debate about the effects of popular sentiment and legislative provision
for harsher sentences on the actual practice of judicial discretion. However,
the muted debate disappeared with the headlines. Even where a judge of the
lower courts has banned the publishing of names of persons involved in sexual
crime cases in the interest of the victim/s, the High Court has over turned such
decisions (Irish Times.2002).
Yet there is a moral schizophrenia
in sections of the media when it comes to sexual crime alleged or real. While
one can read tabloid headlines such as ‘Sex Beast’ and ‘Sex Monster’
(Stanko.2000) the flick of the front page of the tabloid will bring the reader
into a world of intimate, lurid and graphic descriptions of sexual crimes and
fantasies. The material to be found on these voyeuristic journeys, is equal to
the depths of depravity to be found on deviant sexual websites on the World
Wide Web, sites developed and maintained for an ever more voyeuristic public,
deviant sexual sub-cultures there in, and the young and the vulnerable. These
lurid and voyeuristic accounts of criminals proceedings, sex orientated
advertisements and perverted sex chat lines are a clear indication of the moral
schizophrenia of those sections of the media, which are high on rhetoric but
low on morality.
On a daily basis there are
millions of examples of this moral schizophrenia in the media. Staying
specifically with the area of child sexual abuse and exploitation, I have
looked at the sex orientated adverts in the tabloid press. While the extent of
this article is too confined to give the depth of analysis that I would like, I
will however, set out some examples. In the Weekly Sport tabloid, sex orientated
adverts run alongside distasteful lurid details of sex crimes before the
courts, a sample of these sex orientated adverts is:
Young Girls Want to Talk to
You 1-2-1
Bored Young Girls Waiting
for You to Call
Lively Girls on Line Now
Young Girls Willing to Talk
Sex adverts and selective
reporting of sexual crime in The Star (tabloid) follow a similar pattern.
However, The Star goes further by using popular children’s movies to lure
potential young customers to their sex adverts, Home Alone (a popular children’s
movie) and versions thereof. The Joint National Readership Research group have
reported that The Star has some 400,000 readers in Ireland each day, on any
given day there are up wards of forty sex adverts in The Star, including titles
such as:
Bi Girls
Sixth Former
Irish Girls
Hot and Horny
Chat with Girls at Home
Girls looking for Men
Girls at Home
This supply of lurid
material that often runs alongside advertisements for children’s summer camps
and other sporting activity of interest to children must surely be of concern
to those in Irish society who genuinely want to see, sexual crime and the
environment that facilitates and normalises it eliminated. It is interesting to
note that these perverted sex adverts for sex chat lines are excluded from our
advertising standards legislation. The proliferation of child owned mobile
phones combined with this easy access to lurid material pose a real danger to
community safety.
Who are these lurid
advertisements directed towards? If not the weak minded, the vulnerable and the
young. The word Girl in the Oxford English Dictionary means, ‘Female Child’.
This discourse coupled with the use of child movies as an introduction to sex chat
lines, can leave one with no other conclusion than that these sex orientated
adverts are aimed at grooming children, those with a distorted sexual script
and any one in the community who derives pleasure from the normalisation of
sexual deviance, that these adverts portray. While much reporting of a lurid
and voyeuristic nature is broadly confined to the tabloids and certain internet
sites it is not exclusive to same. Some Broad sheets and visual media outlets
have also tapped into this marketable commodity especially at times of high
profile cases.
Tom Inglis, in his book,
Lessons in Irish Sexuality (1998), sets out the findings of his research when
he examined the Sunday Independent, for two separate six month periods. The
first six months in 1963 and the second in 1993, his analysis indicated that
over the thirty-year period, the number of explicit articles and photographs
increased from two to thirty-three; the number of indirect items about sex
increased from one to forty-four; and the number of direct items increased from
eleven to seventy-six. Roger Grafe (2000) found in his research that:
The broad sheets report
about three times the actual proportion of violent crime and the tabloids about
ten times. The picture of the world one gets from crime news is that it is a
very violent place. Inflated perceptions of the level of violence create
pressure for something to be done (p.31).
What is most significant
about this increased supply of lurid and deviant material by sections of the
media is that it has gone unchallenged by the Government and those NGOs,
voluntary and community groups who allegedly have the interests of victims at
heart. Indeed these very same organisations know well that they will themselves
need banner headlines when they seek their next trench of funding from
Government. The double standards of some politicians were highlighted with the
resignation of Government Minister, Mr Bobby Molloy in 2002, after it was
disclosed by the right Hon. Mr Justice O’Sullivan, that Mr Molloy, had phoned
him in relation to the sentencing of a man convicted but not yet sentenced for
raping his daughter. However, the web of intrigue did not stop there; Under a
Freedom of Information request by RTE’s, Good Morning Ireland, the Department
of Justice was forced to disclose that the then Minister for Justice, Mr John
O’Donoghue, ‘Mr Zero Tolerance’, had exchanged fifteen letters with Mr Molloy
about the man convicted of, but not yet sentenced for raping his daughter.
All of the communications
focused on the possibility of getting temporary release or bail for the
convicted person, an intervention that is both unlawful and un-constitutional.
The same Minister for Justice was a regular contributor by way of articles and
interviews with the same lurid tabloids. Indeed Mr O’Donoghue would see himself
before the District Court when a convicted person sought summonses issued
against Mr O’Donoghue in a private criminal prosecution, after it was disclosed
under the FOI Act that Mr O’Donoghue had sent an unlawful communication to the
DPP in relation to that convicted persons case (Irish Times.2002). And while Mr
O’Donoghue was telling the people of Ireland that sexual crime against children
would not be tolerated, he and others were signing off on a deal that would see
Religious Child Rapists getting bailed out to the tune of hundreds of millions
of Euro, at a time when the majority of the 5500 children in the ‘care’ of the
State don’t have access to professional help. Mr O’Donoghue resigned from his
position as Chair of the Dail in 2009 after it was disclosed that he had spent
vast amounts of tax payer’s money on extravagances for himself and his wife,
including Gondala rides in Venice, while staying in 900 Euro per night Hotel
rooms.
Few politicians or groups
are prepared to challenge accesses by the media. Voluntary, community,
‘victims’ groups and others in the ‘victims industry’ depend on media coverage
to high light their profile, which in turn helps them to secure funding from
Government each year. An unprecedented ‘bogus moral panic’ was created when a
‘victims’ group colluded with the tabloids to gain banner headlines. In 2003 a
‘victims’ group claimed that over the previous five years there had been a
substantial increase in drug induced rape and sexual assault cases. In fact the
Gardai and the Sexual Assault Unit at the Rotunda Hospital stated that not one
single case of drug induced rape or sexual assault had ever been brought to
their attention. Following comprehensive investigation by the Sexual Assault
Units around the country, this investigation included toxicology reports on
each victim, it was clearly established that the women making such allegations
(if they ever did) had simply consumed so much alcohol that they could not
remember what they had done the night before. Yet nobody seemed to bat an eye
lid when this bogus moral panic was exposed in an RTE 1, Crime Line Report,
26th January, 2003.
The Irish Independent (2002)
reported how a 17 year old French youth, claimed to have been driven by a cult
horror movie ‘Scream’ to commit the gratuitous murder of a fifteen year old
girl. French Justice Minister, Dominique Perben, commenting on the case said:
The Government must quickly
come up with a way to avoid this repetition of scenes of violence at the
disposition of adolescents. These violent scenes set in motion some
particularly fragile adolescents who then play out misdemeanours or crimes.
Sex orientated sites on the
internet are an extension of this tabloid supply of deviant material, to an
ever more voyeuristic public and particularly those with a distorted sexual
script there in. Millions of web pages now provide a wide range of sex
orientated pornography and literature. The scales of provision go from curious
voyeurism, to the most lurid taste, reaching into the dark recesses of unstable
minds. In February, 2001, seven people were convicted in London for their part
in the ‘Wonderland Club’ which was the world’s largest known child pornography
web site. The ‘Wonderland Club’ internet data base held some 750,000 images,
including the rape of babies as young as two months old (Irish
Indpendent.2001). It is clear from the many cases coming before the courts in
England and Ireland, that the higher socio-economic groupings are the main yet
not exclusive users of this new technological deviance, this was clear from
Operation Amethyst (Irish Times.2002) and was reinforced by experts in this
field who were interviewed on an RTE, Prime Time programme on this subject on
the 31st May 2010.
For generations Irish people
were constrained by the condemnation of all, but normal marital sexual
relations by the Catholic Church, however, following the Ferns, Murphy and Ryan
reports into religious child rapists that constraint is laid bare, the
constraints of moral and religious teaching for generations, has been sharply
lifted by the expose of the Catholic Church and the voyeuristic and lurid
material of a newly liberated technological era. One would be a fool to suggest
that sexual deviance is not a marketable commodity, however, with that
marketing must come responsibility. Tony O’Neil CEO of Palmstories.com one of
the biggest providers of porn on the internet and mobile phones says of the
industry:
As far as the web is
concerned, pornography has always been at the cutting edge technology wise, the
industry is worth billions of dollars generating more money than music or
movies (Irish Times. 2001).
Emer O’ Kelly told us in the
Sunday Independent, that she and other citizens are scourged by sexually
explicit pornography, that is sent to them via the internet, into the privacy
of their own homes, yet this is not illegal. Supply and demand for lurid and
voyeuristic material and sexual stimuli for an ever more voyeuristic public and
deviant sub-cultures there in, are growing unhindered, and sections of the
media have not been wanting in feeding that demand and exploiting the
aquiesants of the Government and others who turn a blind eye to this moral
quagmire. Prof. Paul O’ Mahony (1996) says:
Pornographic portrayals of
the relations between men and women and adults and children permeate our
society. Pornography inevitably plays an important role in forming sexual
attitudes and quite possibly, in facilitating and promoting sexual crime
(p.219).
ISPCC Chief Executive, Paul
Gilligan, reacting to Operation Amethyst, supported this view expressed by O’
Mahony in that pornography can facilitate crime and can be an integral part of
sexual criminality when he said:
There is clear evidence from
other countries that those in possession of child pornography represent a real
risk to children and that those who actively purchase such material represent a
greater risk. Some of the biggest paedophile rings and the most compulsive
paedophile offenders have been caught on the basis of storing this type of material
(Irish Independent.2002).
That said of course, the
many thousands of religious child rapists including Homophiles, Hetrophiles and
Paedophiles who operated within the Catholic Church would not have had access
to such pornographic material in the 1940s/50s/60s and so forth. The ever more
voyeuristic public and particularly those with a distorted sexual script there
in, as set out in this article, are vulnerable to the detrimental influences of
deviant literature and photography and persons outside this profile, who lack
countervailing influences, particularly the young, can be taken along on a tide
of sexual deviant activity and criminality. The conviction in England in May
2010 of two ten year old boys for the attempted rape of an eight year old girl,
begs the question, why are children engaging is such activity, they did not
learn it from watching the Telly Tubbies or Bosco.
In a survey published in
July, 2002, the National Centre for Technology in Education found that 73% of
8-10 year old children had internet access at home. In an RTE Prime Time
investigation aired on the 31st of May 2010, it was shown that 99% of children
now have access to the internet at home. The report in 2002 further stated that
as many as 25% of children with internet access at home had encountered
pornography on the internet. In the Prime Time programme in 2010 this number is
much greater and the dangers posed by chat rooms and social networking sites
are an ever increasing danger. This normalising of deviant activity by the
pornographic web sites, other sections of the media and an acquiescent
Government and others have lowered the barriers, and provided a constant stream
of images and literature to create and feed unhealthy and grossly unrealistic
fantasies. The great disappointment with the Prime Time programme was that it
failed to address the role played by the tabloids and other media in
normalising and facilitating sexual crime, and rather seemed to suggest that it
is only those sites that exchange child pornography or have a cyber-contact
element that pose the only threat to children, again enforcing the image of the
paedophile, homophile or hetrophile as a man in the cyber bushes wearing a rain
coat.
What is important to remember
about deviance, says Young (1973) is that:
Deviant behaviour….is a
meaningful attempt to solve the problems faced by a group or isolated
individual – it is not a meaningless pathology (p.42).
Young’s proposition raises
the question, Why does society prefer to decry rather than confront sexual
deviance in an open and constructive forum? May explanations can be offered and
some have been put forward in this paper, however, unlike ‘homosexuality’ other
sexual sub-cultures particularly those relating to child sexual abuse, cannot
be so easily set outside the dominant sexual culture. It is perhaps this fear
of examining too closely sexual crime and particularly sexual crime against
children (Operation Amethyst, Ferns Report, Murphy Report, Ryan Report) that allows
the hard line consensus to square their shoulders and shout ‘hang them’,
however, as we have learned in Ireland, it is usually those who shout the
loudest that do so to conceal their own crimes.
If the figures, relating to
sexual crime in Ireland presented in this article in terms of Operation
Amethyst and so forth are even close to the true extent of sexual crime, then
one wonders in a population of less than four-million people, what family in
the broadest sense is without its own difficulties. The recent revelations by
Sinn Fein, President, Gerry Adams that he had known for decades that both his
father and Brother Liam were child abusers, exposes the reality of how many
dark secrets remain untold in Ireland. However, all is not lost as Brenda O’ Brien
reminds us that:
An important Canadian study
shows that untreated sex offenders have a 35% recidivism rate, while it is less
than 10% for those who are un treated (Irish Times.2002).
When John O’Donoghue TD was
Minister for Justice, dozens of convicted sex offenders applied to go on the
sex offenders treatment programme at Arbour Hill Prison, the majority were told
that there were no facilities to treat them due to lack of funding, this at a
time when the Department of Justice spent vast fortunes on expensive trips
abroad and squandered tens of millions of Euro on lavish expenses. Many within
the hard-line consensus like British Home Secretary, Jack Straw (1997-2001) who
introduced ill-considered and punitive measures against sexual deviance, found
that he had to build the scaffold close to home when his brother was charged
with sexual crimes against two young girls in 2000. In July 2001, the
Taoiseach’s Office was quick to play down reports that it was the subject of a
major investigation by the Director of Equality, into allegations of serious
sexual harassment against a former female employee. While some Cabinet
Ministers, had in the weeks prior to these allegations against the Taoiseach’s
Office been able to illegally comment on certain cases of a sexual nature
before the criminal courts, the Taoiseach’s Department had ‘No Comment’ in
relation to its own dirty laundry that was being hung out in the public arena.
This hypocrisy is not
exclusive to weak politicians, in 2005; The Editor of The Star paid a sex
offender who had just been released from prison 400 Euro for photographs of the
said sex offender. The said sex offender had asked a friend to take pictures of
him as he walked in O’Connell Street on the day he was released from prison,
the said sex offender then sold these photographs to The Star for 400 Euro, the
following day The Editor of The Star published the photographs claiming that a
Star photographer had ‘captured’ the pictures as he seen the said sex offender
on O’ Connell Street. The Editor of The Star continues to be a paid guest on
many Irish television programmes where he continues to lecture the Irish public
on matters of morality and good citizenship.
The vitriol expounded by
certain sections of the media for those accused of sexual crime, particularly
against children, it is not a new phenomenon. In the not too distant past
‘homosexuals’ were the target of the editorial ‘moralists’. In the 1980s and
1990s Ireland’s sexual closet flung open with a vengeance and from this sexual
expose, homosexuals were reluctantly ‘accepted’ into the status quo as an
oppressed sexual minority, as opposed to a ‘sexually deviant sub-culture’. Such
is the strength of the ‘homosexual’ lobby today in the UK and Ireland, that
laws have been introduced to reflect a more liberal approach to the gay
community. What ‘was’ seen as being seriously criminal by the Governments of
the UK and Ireland a few short years ago is today not only ‘tolerated’ but is
legislated for. Sexual activity with a child must remain criminal as no child
can consent to such activity, however, child protection, community safety and
crime prevention cannot be delegated to certain weak politicians and editorial
‘moralists’, whose only motivation respectively is self-preservation and gross
commercialism.
Cross (1979) quotes Lord
Summers, to sum up, attitudes to homosexuality before the prevailing
liberalism:
Persons who commit the
offences now under consideration seek the habitual gratification of particular
perverted lust which not only takes them out of the class of ordinary men gone
wrong, but stamps them with the hall-mark of specialised and extraordinary
class as much as if they carried on their bodies some physical peculiarity
(p.366).
In a more contemporary
address of homosexuality, Monsignor, Andrew Baker of the Vatican’s Congregation
of Bishops said:
Homosexuals may be more
familiar with certain patterns and techniques of deception and repression…Nor
can a homosexual be genuinely a sign of Christ’s spousal love for the Church…if
the homosexual could be healed from such disorder, then he could be considered
for admission to the seminary and possibly to Holy Orders, but not while being
afflicted with the disorder (Irish Times.2002).
In deed these words may well
have meant something if they were not being uttered by a representative of the
Catholic Church, a Church that has concealed the rape of thousands of children
across the world at the hands of Homophiles, Hetrophiles and Paedophiles within
the Catholic Church. An interesting observation that I make in relation to the
current trend by certain sections of the media to burn male sexual deviants,
alleged or real, at the stake, while excusing their female counter parts as
being mentally ill. Is the fact that a number of journalists who belonged to
the once flogged sub-culture of ‘homosexuality’, set aside more than a fair
share of column inches to condemn the deviance of recently emerging sexual
sub-cultures. Perhaps these individuals unsure of their own membership of their
particular group need to vilify others for some form of security and acceptance
into an uncertain world. Why do these journalists create the illusion that all
religious child rapists were paedophiles when in fact over 95% of them were
Homophiles, this misinformation helps to create the illusion that certain
sections of society do not rape children, when the evidence is very clearly to
the contrary.
However, out of this
vilification and recrimination needs to emerge rational and reasoned debate
about how to develop best practice in child protection, crime prevention and
community safety, how many lives could have been saved if the ‘Gay’ debate had
not been left for so long in the hands of the ‘moral’ guardians in the media
and politics. The difficulty with the supply of lurid and voyeuristic material
in the media and especially that which feeds the habits of those with a
distorted sexual script and facilitates sexual crime in general (O’
Mahony.1996), is that it normalises deviance in the minds of people already
suffering from a variety of psychological, emotional, moral and social crisis.
Many sex offenders come from non-nurturing back grounds; they can’t express
their emotions or even ask the questions that could set them free from a life
time of mental torture (Casey.1999). A Press Ombudsman is a good start to
setting some standard in a runaway media, however, much more needs to be done
if another generation are not to be morally bankrupted by those who help
normalise and facilitate sexual crime in Ireland.
[1] Journophile is the term
used to describe those persons who write or contribute to those media outlets
that facilitate and normalise sexual deviance by way of their objectification
of men, women and children through the advertising of perverted sex chat lines,
pornographic imagery or lurid sexual literature.
[2] Operation Amethyst was
an FBI led investigation that identified people all over the world who had
accessed, paid for and down loaded child pornography from the internet. 100
people were identified in Ireland including a Circuit Court Judge who would
later have the charges against him dropped as the search warrant used to seize
his computer was some hours out of date. The Judge in question had been one of
the founder members of the now defunct Progressive Democrats, the
‘anti-corruption’ party.
[3] Owen/Eoin Smyth was a
member of the republican movement in Monaghan Town, and turned RUC informer
when arrested by the RUC in 1981 in relation to the murders of pensioner Norman
Strong and his son James. Smyth did not go into the witness box against IRA
members and so was allowed to return to Monaghan and remain a member of Sinn
Fein; Smyth is in 2012, persona non grata. It is not unusual for such informers
to be allowed to continue to work for Sinn Fein, Eamon Collins was allowed to
return to Newry after turning RUC informer, Eamon was later murdered by members
of the Real IRA for being critical of their campaign.
