Bob's riff singled out what "we went through with Anthony Apuron" and how a lot of people knew for a very long time about the horrors happening deep inside our (Catholic) church and did nothing about it.
Bob has referenced this fact several times and it's important to keep referencing it, because as Bob points out, nothing can stop these horrors from recurring other than constant vigilance.
It's too easy to point our fingers at this abstract thing called "the archdiocese" or even "Apuron," or the name of any other cleric we may want to blame.
Sure, we in the pews have a right to expect sanctity from our clergy and religious - or at least good behavior. But when parents look the other way or bury their heads in the sand as they did for decades as hundreds of their own children were routinely sexually molested, then something else is going on.
It's simply NOT natural to look the other way while your own child is being abused - let alone sexually molested. And I don't care if it was a priest, a bishop, a nun, a teacher, or Uncle Bill.
Yes, yes, I've heard all of the arguments (excuses really) from culture: that local Catholics were taught never to question the priest or speak ill of him, etc. But seriously...at the expense of your children???
Later in the same show, after Bob's usual Friday expose of our now-governor arguing before the Guam Legislature to let babies who survive abortion die in a bio-waste bucket, Bob used the word "miracle" to describe how such an ardent, public, virulent, and even vicious advocate for baby killing could be elected governor - and twice, especially since the majority of those dead babies are CHamoru and the majority of voters are Catholic.
It's really the same thing.
Parents looked the other way as their sick church superiors helped themselves to their children's bodies. And parents are looking the other way as their sick government superiors have been spending countless tax dollars and judicial resources in an effort to stack up ever more children's bodies - dead ones.
So what's going on Guam?
Well, the first thing to note is that we're not alone.
Abusing children - or murdering them - in or out of the womb - is not unique to Guam. But - and this is a big BUT - it is worse in Guam than anywhere else that flies the Stars and Stripes.
JW has already - and many times - made reference to the numerical reality that the clergy sex abuse crisis is, exponentially, worse than anywhere in the entire Catholic World.
I don't have time to link all this, but the clergy sex abuse crisis - in Guam - as of 2019, was, per capita, 14 times the size of the Boston crisis that provided the story for the Academy Award Winning Movie - SPOTLIGHT.
14 TIMES! See: MORE
We really shouldn't be surprised. While we celebrate ourselves and plan for the next fiesta, there are these ugly facts:
• Guam has the most liberal abortion laws in the nation, which allow for the termination of nearly one out of 10 pregnancies with more than 60 percent being Chamorro (2012 Guam Medical Records).
• Guam has the highest divorce rate in the world (4.7 divorces per 1,000 population, 2010 Guam Statistical Yearbook, vs. Russia's 4.5 per 1,000, 2011 United Nations Demographic Yearbook).
• Guam has the 14th highest suicide rate in the world and a rate 1.2 times the national average (2011 World Health Organization and A Profile of Suicide on Guam, September 2011).
• Guam has a 20-percent age points higher out-of-wedlock birth rate (60 percent) compared to the rest of the nation (40.8 percent, CDC 2010). Note: Guam stopped reporting "illegitimate" births in 2005 -- 60 percent is based on the average between 2000 and 2005.
• Guam has double the teen birthrate compared to the rest of the nation (June 25 Pacific Daily News).
• Guam's rape rate is 94.4 per 100,000 (2011 Yearbook: 151 reported rapes). This is nearly triple the national average of 29.8. (U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2013, Table 314).
• And, worst of all, Guam abuses and neglects its children at nearly double the national average (Guam child maltreatment rate of 76.81 per 1,000 children, based on 2012 CPS report and 2010 census vs. 41.2 per 1,000 children national average as per Table 3-2, Child Maltreatment 2011, Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
Okay, so those look like decade old facts. Yah. They are. They are copied from my letter to the editor printed in the PDN on Jul. 14, 2013.
It's a good thing I saved a PDF copy of the online version of the letter because not only has the PDN been wiped dry of this letter it doesn't even appear in Newspapers.com
The stats may be a decade old, however, our every day news tell us that not only has nothing changed in "Catholic" Guam, but it's exponentially worse...and getting "worser."
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