An Insult to the Insulted

Former Rep. Mark Foley, after he resigned, blamed not only alcohol abuse but sexual abuse by a Catholic priest for his behavior. (I see, though, Susie Bright's point that 16-year-old males aren't children, have their own sex lives and can make some decisions for themselves about their sexuality, sex lives and particular sexual activities.) And in a report on WWL (Schroeder can tell you why you should hate WWL), a suddenly-clipped sound bite left the impression that there is a direct connection between experiencing childhood sexual abuse and commiting child sexual abuse--what the man truly said was that 1/3 to 2/3s of sex abusers have some kind of sexual abuse in their background. That's of abusers, not the general population of sexual abuse survivors. The majority do not repeat the abuse.

In some cases, though, abuse is repeated but it is repeated, the same abuse and behavior, not the alleged touches of a priest "repeated" as instant messages about the hotness of 16-year-old athletes. It is not like this, from Terrence Real's I Don't Want to Talk About It:

Peter reminded me of a case I supervised in which 5 British boys were lured onto a deserted beach by a local man who sodomized 2 of them while the others watched. True to the male norms of their culture, none of the boys said a word about their experience from that day forward, to anyone else or even to one another. What they did do, however, for the next 5 years or so, was take turns sodomizing one another. ... By carrying on the abuse with one another, the boys were trying to normalize it, to share the burden (76).

It is not the same. Foley's excuse is bullshit and an insult to survivors.