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Church magazine calls rape victims liars, accused priests victims
By Niharika Banerjee
A modern-day Eve finds it convenient to claim that she was raped when she is caught in the act," reads a column in a weekly magazine run by the Catholic Church that has come out in open support of a bishop and a few priests who have been accused of rape. The article in the latest edition of Indian Currents by columnist AJ Philip claims that there were "no repeated rapes" in either of the two rape cases that have rattled Kerala churches. The article titled "Villians as victims" tries to whitewash the accused bishop and the priests as Philip mentions a "memorable encounter" with one of the accused priests. "The priest had a reputation as a good counsellor," Philip writes. A school teacher, in Kerala, has alleged that four Orthodox priests blackmailed and sexually abused her after she confessed to having a premarital affair with a priest. In his column, Philips asks that if the complainant was really a victim of a "terrible" thing as rape, why did she not inform her parents of the incident. "In the Orthodox Church, an adult person has to confess his/her sins to the priest at least once a year. The story of the woman in question is that she told the priest about her 'sin' and it encouraged him to 'rape' her. She kept on confessing and the priests kept on 'raping' her!" the article reads. The article goes on to shame the victim, implying that it was only when her husband discovered a credit-card transaction of her hotel bill of a night she spent with a priest that the "lid of the scandal was blown off". In the case where a Kerala nun has charged the bishop of the Jalandhar diocese of Roman Catholic Church with rape and unnatural sex multiple times in two years, the article claims that she framed him in a false case after she was removed from the post of Mother Superior. "Assuming that what she says is true, can a person who reached the status of Mother General in her religious order be 'raped' 13 times? Did she complain after the first, second, third, fourth and fifth rapes? Forget all of them, did she complain after the 13th rape?" says Philip. "If the bishop had really 'raped' her, he would have been vulnerable and would not have dared to take action against her," he writes. At the end of the article, however, Philip clarifies that he is not a rape apologist. "...rape is an abominable act and the rapist should be severely punished," says Philip. Meanwhile, the Delhi archdiocese has rejected the claims by the family of the Kerala nun that she had informed Archbishop Anil Couto about her alleged abuse by a bishop of Jalandhar diocese. Earlier today, a 39-year-old woman has accused an Orthodox Church priest, Binu George, of sexually abusing her in 2014.
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