JAMAICA
Jamaica Observer
Christopher Burns
Sunday, January 22, 2017
There is everything frightening about the spate of church-related, sex abuse cases in Jamaica involving teenage children — mostly girls. What’s even more disturbing is that, although all too familiar, evidence suggests the occurrences are largely unreported.
Everything about these sexual maladies and horrifying trends should impel us to abominate, in the strongest terms, all forms of sexual abuse of our boys, girls and young women. We should condemn all forms of sexual violence, even as we accept the imperfections of men — especially men of the cloth.
Nevertheless, accepting human imperfections and failings is not an excuse for the kinds of wicked penetrative invasion or transactional relationships some of these men (and women) are foisting on our vulnerable and innocent children. Besides the serious criminal breach, there is a lasting desecration of these children’s ambition, body and promise — it is a defilement that no amount of therapy or passage of time may ever cure. Pastors or not, we cannot allow gaps in our personal economies to lull us (parents or guardians) into complacency or cause us to conjure convenient sorry-ass explanations as conduits to assist us with wriggling our way out of taking responsibility for sanctioning such terrible deeds — inadvertently or not, or on the basis of financial opportunity.
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