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| Father Matthew Jolly Photo: Manchester Evening News |
Given the enormity of the scandals involving predatory paedophile priests and given Pope Francis' profesed determination to put a stop to it and introduce reforms to prevent it, you would expect it to be a thing of the past by now.
Not a bit of it, it seems. Predatory paedophilia is alive and well inside the Catholic Church and abusers are still being recruited into its ranks, if this case from UK is anything to go by.
Father Matthew Jolly was ordained in 2015 and while in Belgium, made contact with a man on Grindr. Unbeknown to him, the man was an undercover police officer who had only set up a fake account 20 minutes earlier. He was posing as a 36 year-old bisexual with a 2 year-old son. During the conversation, Jolly told the man that he was interested in sex with children. He expressed an interest in young girls but said a 'cute boy' would also be of interest.
He then told the undercover police officer what he would like to do to his (non-existent) 'son' before sending him an indecent photograph of himself. He said he intended to return to the UK in two weeks time and the pair continued their conversation on various social media platforms. During this exchange, Jolly told the man that he would like to 'share' his son with him. They arranged to meet at a house in Hale in Halton, Cheshire, where Jolly told the cop what he intended to do to the boy.
The police officer then revealed his identity, and, after a struggle in which Jolly tried to run away, arrested him.
Sentencing him to three years in prison, Judge Recorder Jeremy Lasker, of Liverpool Crown Court, said:
It cannot be said it was an aberration, it was something you considered at length over a time. During that lengthy period it progressed so far as you believed almost to fruition.
You are an ordained priest in the Catholic Church.
I do not impose a more severe sentence for that reason but it goes without saying, although I do say it, that your words and actions and intentions seem to me to be wholly inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic church and you have done nothing but a great disservice to the church.
Jolly was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for life.
It is not immediately obvious why being an ordained priest in the Catholic Church is grounds for a lighter sentence, not a more lengthy one.
Fortunately, there was no actual child to be abused in this particular case, but perhaps the most disturbing aspects to it are that these depraved predators are still seeing priesthood in the Catholic Church as a means of trusted access to children and other vulnerable people, and the Catholic Church is still recruiting them and failing to detect them in training.
Clearly, the public are still at risk from the activities of these predators, and the Catholic Church is failing to protect children from them. Tweet
I do not read the judge's comments as a lighter sentence but rather as not imposing a heavier sentence because Jolly is a priest than he would otherwise have imposed.
ReplyDeleteI fail to see the difference.
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