GUAM
Pacific Daily News
Tim Rohr December 3, 2016
In his post-election analysis on a local news show, Guam pollster Ron McNinch attributed Sen. Frank Blas Jr.’s loss to his introduction of a bill lifting the civil statute of limitations on crimes involving child sexual abuse of minors.
McNinch may be right, but so what.
Guam has a problem — a big one. Last year the Pacific Daily News reported that Guam has twice the rape rate of the rest of the nation and noted that 80 percent of Guam’s registered sex offenders have assaulted a child. Another news source labeled the rate of child abuse on Guam “a frightening epidemic.”
In response to this horror, we have had the usual fare of roundtables, candle lightings, awareness weeks, education efforts and general legislative hand-wringing, but the papers keep telling us one horror story after another.
Recently the horror got more horrible as we learned of the unimaginable alleged assaults on young boys in the 1970s by the priest who would become Guam’s archbishop for three decades.
According to his accusers, now-Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron used his position to seduce, molest and rape innocent altar boys, and then threatened them into a torturous decades-long silence that haunted and broke their lives.
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