[#rapeculture]
To the one, it’s not Harvey effing Weinstein. To the other, that fact is only distally or, perhaps, if proximal, tangentially related to anything. The important point about systemic or habitual abuse is that it requires system and habit.
A former teacher at a Catholic school in Queens who said she had reported the sexual abuse of seven female students by a priest in 1991 now claims that the Diocese of Brooklyn covered it up for more than a decade, allowing more girls to be abused.
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Ms. Porcaro, 63, said that at the end of 1990, seven fifth-graders told her that Father Prochaski was sexually abusing them. Most were Polish immigrants whose families had been brought to America with the help of the priest, to whom they felt beholden.
She said she reported the abuse to the principal, a nun from the Sisters of the Holy Family order. She said the nun laughed and said, “Oh, everybody knows about Father Adam,” she recalled. “And I had tears in my eyes.”
The New York Times article from Sharon Otterman closes with the note that a fund for Brooklyn Diocese survivors has seen sixty settlements accepted, of seventy-six offers from two hundred-eleven claims.
Let us be clear:
… it was not until 2002 that the Brooklyn Diocese notified law enforcement about the allegations. That was the year American bishops passed the Dallas Charter, requiring that dioceses report all allegations of sexual abuse of minors to public authorities. By then, none of the allegations against Mr. Prochaski were within the statute of limitations for prosecution, the spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney said.
This is, by definition, rape culture.
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Image note: Composite — Details of frames from Attack on Titan, episode 6, “The World the Girl Saw”.
Otterman, Sharon. “23 Women Accuse Former Queens Priest of Abusing Them as Children”. The New York Times. 12 October 2017.
This Is 