UNITED STATES
Salon

August 16, 2018

By Amanda Marcotte

Both sexual predation and anti-choice politics are rooted in patriarchal ideology and a culture of sexual shame

The Catholic Church sex abuse scandals are often talked about as if they are in the past, but this summer has been a reminder that this horror show continues to unspool, 16 years after the Boston Globe’s famous “Spotlight” series exposing the cover-up first ran. This week, a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a report accusing more than 300 priests of abusing more than 1,000 children over seven decades. The details are almost incomprehensibly awful, including accusations of repeated rape, child pornography and priests who marked their victims with jewelry to alert other predators that these children had been “groomed” to accept abuse.

“The cover-up was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and…