A priest acknowledged Thursday that he used to go naked in saunas with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex.
One of the hardest things about abuse is the way it’s passed down, one victim to another, so that you can trace it back to the original person who first thought it was a good idea to punch or rape a child, and all the crimes that spread outward from there.
Foley was never not an object of pity, not to me, anyway, even before I knew about the priest. Nobody targets children who doesn’t have something haywire in his head, who doesn’t clearly need all kinds of help. But reasons are not excuses, and what happened to Foley as a child did not give him leave to do that to another child. Not every abused person becomes his abuser, and some people are strong enough toseek help rather than continue the chain of hurt into another generation.
Pity doesn’t extend to those who should have recognized Foley’s behavior and prevented it from going as far as it did. Pity is not absolution, and it doesn’t extend to allowing Foley some kind of free pass. Nobody gets that who does what he did. Reasons are not excuses, and committing the same crime as was committed against you just makes you the same kind of criminal.
A.
One of the hardest things about abuse is the way it’s passed down, one victim to another, so that you can trace it back to the original person who first thought it was a good idea to punch or rape a child, and all the crimes that spread outward from there.
Well, except, as you point out, some of us have survived abuse as children, but we do not perpetrate abuse against other children as adults. And those who float abuse as an excuse, or even a reason, for their own bad behavior against others get no sympathy from me. ‘Personal responsibility’ INDEED.
Exactly right. My five brothers and sisters and I spent our entire lives until age 18 being physically and emotionally beaten up by my alcoholic father, who had been beaten up on by his father, and so on, I imagine, back to freakin’ Adam. Yeah, it sucked, and we’re all glad we survived it. The thing is, we all decided that it stopped with us, and while I doubt seriously that any of us are going to get Parent of the Year awards any time soon, between us we have 13 pretty reasonably happy grown children who are out living their lives productively without the memories we have, and a couple of whom have happy children of their own now.
So yeah, Mark, you might need help, although whether you get it or not is a matter of supreme indifference to me, so long as you aren’t in a position to stalk any more children. But no one MADE you do any of the things you did. That’s all you, dude. Live with that.