From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2013
Following my Molo workshop take-3 dispatch one of the readers writes: “Father Beste your Molo workshop was indeed inspiring- I was touched by your take-3 dispatch how some propagandists use social media to tarnish the faith of the young.
It is not only Facebook father but media in general. In February I was in one of the parishes talking to youth and when I asked them why many young people are not pursuing vocation to priesthood and religious life as used to be before. One of them told me is because of sex abuse of minors by clergy.
When I asked where they are getting these information one told me he had just read on the Standard about the son of late Martin Shikuku who is suing a bishop who worked in Kenya for abusing him. These are just few examples how media can ruin the youth unless we find a new way to evangelize them”.
The said newspaper was the Standard published on February 9, 2013. It exposed the story of son of late prominent politician, Martin Shikuku alleging years of sexual abuse at the hands of priests in Kenya and abroad.
According to the story, Emmanuel Shikuku, 45, has filed a case in the UK against six men who were part of the Mill Hill Missionaries order. He claims he was a victim of a series of rapes and other forms of abuse between 1978 and 1994.
One of the men he names is former bishop of the Ngong Catholic Diocese Fr Cornelius Schilder, a Dutch national stripped of his duties as a priest in 2009 for allegedly abusing a Maasai herds’ boy.
Emmanuel did not attend his father’s funeral as he was in Germany at the time pursuing his claim. After spending much of the last two decades in Europe, Emmanuel is back in the country to record a statement with police over the alleged crimes.
He has sued six Mill Hill priests — four Dutchmen and two Britons — over sex attacks that allegedly began when he was a nine-year-old altar boy in Mumias.
Speaking exclusively to The Standard on Saturday, Emmanuel described what he termed “the haunting memories of a painful childhood” he suffered as a result of the abuse.
Asked why he has decided to file a complaint after such a long time, he said “shame, guilt and a fear of not being believed” had held him back until recently. He abandoned priesthood training at St Joseph’s College in London in 1994, due to an addiction to alcohol. He says he started drinking to cope with the assaults.
Emmanuel’s claim becomes the third prominent incident of sexual abuse leveled against foreign Catholic priests in Kenya. In 2005, Moses Ole Uka from Ngong accused Fr. Schilder and other Mill Hill priests of abusing him.
In 2009, Fr Renato Sessana, famously known locally as Fr Kizito from Comboni Fathers, was accused by a group of young men of abuse. The case was later thrown out of court due to lack of evidence.
In 2011, he was once again thrust into the limelight on the same charges after one of personal assistants accused him of abusing him after lacing his food with sleeping pills. The police later released him without preferring a charge.
By the time he secured a place at St Joseph’s College in September 1993, Emmanuel said his alcohol abuse had increased to an unmanageable level. Even there, he was also allegedly abused by another priest, a staff member at the college.
While these allegations could be true, I think we should tell our young people that the sin of few priests cannot discourage them from pursuing priesthood and religious vocations. Furthermore, catholic clergy are not more likely to abuse children than other clergy or men in general.
Sexual abuse of a minor by anyone is intrinsically evil according to the moral law and a serious crime according to the civil law. No situation, no motive, or no excuse can justify it—ethically or legally—under any circumstances.
While the injury done to the victim’s spiritual well being is likely to be serious and might well be pastorally irremediable, media is to blame in a way for mainly focusing on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy to a greater extent than they focus on other perpetrators of sexual abuse, in fact a much greater percentage of sexual abuse takes place within families than by clergy of any denomination.
None of this is to suggest that the vast majority of allegations aren’t truthful. But the conclusions that are routinely drawn from revelations of sexual abuses are often wrong e.g., celibacy is the problem, or sexual-abuse rates are higher among the Catholic clergy than, say, rabbis or public-school teachers.
One thing that is often forgotten is that not every allegation is true, and a priest, like anyone else who is falsely accused, deserves the opportunity to defend himself. Indeed, canon law, as much as civil law, gives him that right.
The Catholic Church has a membership of approx 1.2 billion people world wide with about 400,000 priests. If you compare the number of priests accused of sexual abuse to the above numbers it is only a very small percentage.
Young people should therefore know that the majority of priests and religious within the Catholic Church are wonderful, loving, giving people who spend their lives caring for others.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Twitter-@8000accomole
Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002