As we endure yet another year with the Jeffrey Epstein Files debacle, one question keeps coming up in my mind: “Where is all the outrage?”

Oh sure, there’s been a lot of talk about the hundreds of victims and the lack of revelation about the perpetrators of pedophilia. It seems, however, that this crime has become normalized over the last decade. The politics and fear behind the public examination of the files have morphed into a side-show to protect powerful men.

The ongoing obfuscation by the Department of Justice and the FBI illustrates that we have clearer legal processes to deal with shoplifting than we do for pedophilia and rape.

It seems that we have begun to excuse depraved behavior, untruths, and manipulative rhetoric as normal for American politicians.

Due to the lack of investigative journalism by most of the traditional media, too many Americans have become inured especially to the awfulness of human trafficking. They have reduced in their minds its critical importance as just another sensational political story involving players in the center of power in the present regime. Indeed, where is the outrage?

I’m very familiar with the sexual abuse of minors. I was serving as a Catholic pastor in the Boston Archdiocese when the clergy sex abuse crisis came to a head there. Hundreds of boys and girls had met their fate during the previous fifty years.

Thousands more did so in many countries throughout the world where Roman Catholic churches and institutions abounded. I and most other clergy and religious men and women were rightly outraged at ever report of the Church’s complicity in hiding abuse for decades.

In my own parish we lost over two hundred families. They never returned to Mass.

There also was abundant collateral damage throughout the Boston area. The morale of the clergy hit rock bottom. Some were wrongly accused and later proved innocent. Others were finally brought to justice.

The accusations were swiftly reported by Chancery officials as front-page news to illustrate the Church was finally in full support of the victims. Yet there was nary a mention publicly when an accused priest, living in hiding, was found innocent of charges and fully exonerated due to lack of credible evidence.

The real damage was done to the faith of family members who had trusted the Church and given their time and treasure to its support. How were they to react when the priest who had baptized their child had been a molester most of his priestly career?

The outrage and estrangement continue to this day, as I’ve listened to many who have permanently left the Catholic communion.

Eventually Hollywood would produce a moving film about the Boston scandal, Spotlight, based on the investigative reporting of the Boston Globe newspaper. It recounted many of the behind-the-scenes events in the region that would eventually embroil the world-wide Catholic Church and lead to the resignation of Boston’s Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture for the 2015-2016 awards season. I saw Spotlight in 2016.

I had already left priestly ministry in 2010, which is another story you can read about in my book, Life Interrupted. Taking Charge After Everything Has Changed (Amazon).

I thought I had emotionally worked through the events of 2002-5 that had brought me close to a complete emotional breakdown. Yet at the end of the film, all I could do was burst into tears. The grief was and is still raw, the outrage palpable, even now as I write these words.

As we endure yet another year with the Jeffrey Epstein Files debacle, one question keeps coming up in my mind: “Where is all the outrage?”

Oh sure, there’s been a lot of talk about the hundreds of victims and the lack of revelation about the perpetrators of pedophilia. It seems, however, that this crime has become normalized over the last decade. The politics and fear behind the public examination of the files have morphed into a side-show to protect powerful men.

The ongoing obfuscation by the Department of Justice and the FBI illustrates that we have clearer legal processes to deal with shoplifting than we do for pedophilia and rape.

It seems that we as a society have begun to excuse depraved behavior, untruths, and manipulative rhetoric as normal for American politicians.

Due to the lack of investigative journalism by most of the traditional media, too many Americans have become inured especially to the awfulness of human trafficking. They have reduced in their minds its critical importance as just another sensational political story involving players in the center of power in the present regime. Indeed, where is the outrage?

I’m very familiar with sexual abuse of minors. I was serving as a Catholic pastor in the Boston Archdiocese when the clergy sex abuse crisis came to a head there. Hundreds of boys and girls had met their fate during the previous fifty years.

Thousands more did so in many countries throughout the world where Roman Catholic churches and institutions abounded. I and most other clergy and religious men and women were rightly outraged at ever report of the Church’s complicity in hiding abuse for decades.

In my own parish we lost over two hundred families. They never returned to Mass.

There also was abundant collateral damage throughout the Boston area. The morale of the clergy hit rock bottom. Some were wrongly accused and later proved innocent. Others were finally brought to justice.

The accusations were swiftly reported by Chancery officials as front-page news to illustrate the Church was finally in full support of the victims. Yet there was nary a mention publicly when an accused priest, living in hiding, was found innocent of charges and fully exonerated due to lack of credible evidence.

The real damage was done to the faith of family members who had trusted the Church and given their time and treasure to its support. How were they to react when the priest who had baptized their child had been a molester most of his priestly career?

The outrage and estrangement continue to this day, as I’ve listened to many who have permanently left the Catholic communion.

Eventually Hollywood would produce a moving film about the Boston scandal, Spotlight, based on the investigative reporting of the Boston Globe newspaper. It recounted many of the behind-the-scenes events in the region that would eventually embroil the world-wide Catholic Church and lead to the resignation of Boston’s Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture for the 2015-2016 awards season. I saw Spotlight in 2016.

I had already left priestly ministry in 2010, which is another story you can read about in my book, Life Interrupted. Taking Charge After Everything Has Changed (Amazon).

I thought I had emotionally worked through the events of 2002-5 that had brought me close to a complete emotional breakdown. Yet at the end of the film, all I could do was burst into tears. The grief was and is still raw, the outrage palpable, even now as I write these wordsI cannot comprehend why, when Catholic parents around the world complained to diocesan officials that a priest had molested their child, the response was so tepid and lacking in outrage that the perpetrator was often assigned to a new parish, only to strike again. Such was the practice worldwide.

The prioritizing of the Church’s reputation and finances and the fear of public scandal was just the “way it was always done” for centuries. Some members of the hierarchy relied on outdated prognoses for proven pedophiles. Far from being cured, they actually were seriously ill and disordered. Current understanding among the psychiatric community insists that pedophiles are so disordered that nothing curtails their attractions, gaslighting, and grooming of young people.

I was particularly surprised because as early as the 1970s my own education and experience had shown me what most of the bishops seemingly just discovered. Following the 2002 scandal, many procedures were put into place by the Catholic Church to support victims of child sexual abuse and their families. Boston became a hub for this endeavor, especially with the support of its new Archbishop, Sean O’Malley, who had “cut his teeth” as bishop of Fall River, MA on the mind-blowing scandal caused by Fr. James Porter, reported to have abused at least 200 children in his lifetime.

An aspect of pedophilia found in nearly all cases is a powerful denial of responsibility and guilt by the perpetrators. “Keeping secrets,” “going along to get along,” and the ancient male “buddy system” kept most predators under the moral and legal radar.

While essential in the military, the “buddy system” when misused or perverted among pedophiles and those engaged in human trafficking enables organized crime, corrupt politicians, and wayward religious administrators literally to get away with murder.

In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, it seems clear that this buddy system is what is keeping guilty parties from speaking the truth. Nonetheless, where is the outrage?

Understandably many Epstein victims have either not come forward with their stories or have maintained absolute privacy. They are rightly afraid of not being believed or of having their lives destroyed by publicity. The U.S. government has dragged its feet for years and avoided a full uncovering of the facts and testimonies behind Epstein’s monstrous behavior and that of his uber-wealthy patrons.

The buddy system is at work and is protected many well-known men who need to be brought to justice!

The title of this essay, “The Normalization of Pedophilia in Our World” points to the universality of pedophilia and its acceptance throughout history. The powerful have always abused the weaker by using methods that either imposed suffering and trauma or aimed to negate the victims’ humanity.

No matter how progressive we’ve been we have learned to exercise power in a highly dualistic way: Power selfishly exercised for the good of the powerful and rich versus Power benignly exercised for the Common Good of humanity.

Power benignly exercised will build healthy communities with affordable housing, a clean environment, educational and career opportunities, efficient public transportation, health care and elder support, the fostering of the arts, protection of liberties and rights of all no matter their racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, support the arts, and much else.

Power selfishly exercised will always debase, abuse, subjugate, and divide people. It will tend toward authoritarianism and dictatorships. It will revel in war and profiteering, and ignore injustices, healthcare and education as wastes of time and money.

Citizens are encouraged to fear each other, support religious, racial, and ethnic intolerance. The trend is to accept apartheid, slavery, genocide, ethnic cleansing, disolving family units, curtailing civil rights. the dissolution of families, and of civil rights.

Citizens know in their hearts that these conditions are wrong, but they fear power selfishly used to the advantage of the few.

Power selfishly exercised can be found not only in authoritarian governments and extremist politics, but in quiet and unexpected settings such as religious and educational institutions that have embraced far-fetched ideologies and theologies.

We can see selfish power expressed in so many meetings of administrators, educators, clergy, and even home owner associations where a word or two from right people will assassinate someone’s character or ridicule a valid idea in the name of propriety.

I have seen promises of donations, philosophical concepts, catchy program concepts, and “best practices” used in meetings as cudgels to shift power dynamics and persuade the adoption of questionable ethics. Thus are individuals’ ideas set aside for not keeping secrets and going along to get along to soothe the ego of the one in power.

Underneath the surface the selfish use of power is all about possession. The ability to take and to keep what does not belong to the powerful.

Over the centuries it was all about grabbing influence, land, property, crops, and financial riches.  The possession of persons in the form of slaves, spouses, and even children played a part in aspects of male domination and power grabbing.

The means to keeping power, in civic life and in religion: intimidation, political intrigue, Biblical and dogmatic fundamentalism, shame, guilt, fear of God,  impossible standards of moral and spiritual perfection, imprisonment, executions, sexual abuse, human trafficking, this, and much more maintains possession of what was taken by the selfishly powerful.

Thus, the justification to possess women and children in servitude to the appetites of the powerful. Isn’t this what Epstein is all about?

In the U.S. nearly half of all women (approximately 43.6%–50%) and over 1 in 6 men (approximately 16%–25%) experience some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes. Studies show 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men are raped, while 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys experience sexual abuse before age 18. (Cal Poly, Humboldt. www.humboldt.edu)

Abuse can be sexual without being physical. It may involve a parent or older sibling misusing power to link a child’s identity, gender, looks, or behavior with shame, i.e. the feeling of being defective.

The same is true when a child is called out as vain or conceited for showing appreciation for their own body or looks. The child may grow up with a permanent link between their sexuality and being “less than.”

Family conversation around sexuality ought to take place in a grateful, positive, non-judgmental, and accepting manner. In this way healthy boundaries can be communicated to young people looking for guidance. I often wonder what happens spiritually and emotionally with young girls and teens who are decked out in makeup, costumes, and attitudes that sexualize them for adult entertainment. Evidently this was one way Epstein trafficked girls as sexual favors for wealthy “clients.”

Boys are just as sensitive as girls regarding how they view themselves. They are often pushed into masculine roles that have little to do with how they are wired emotionally. I hated team sports mostly because no one had the patience to teach me. Instead, I was picked last for teams as a liability.

So, where’s the outrage about pedophilia found throughout the Epstein Files revelations, with many more to come? The appropriate outrage hides in history, buried in the habits formed by generations of “go along to get along”, “keeping secrets”, “family history”, “the buddy system”, and “triggering shame”. The outrage has been minimized by generations of humanity getting too used to living with someone else’s misuse of power to possess, control, and manipulate the innocent among us. When will this system end? Where is your Outrage?
© Michael Parise