Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Who watches the watchers?

When it comes to clergy sexual abuse and the Catholic church, I trust nothing. True, I am jaded by my experience. I’ve tracked clergy sexual abuse for 5 years now, and just when I think it can get no worse, a man charged with safeguarding catholic churches from sexual abuse has been convicted on internet pedophile charges.

A Catholic Church child safety co-ordinator who was in charge of investigating sexual abuse allegations was jailed for 12 months today for internet peadophile offences.

Christopher Jarvis, 49, a married father-of-four, investigated historic claims of child abuse, interviewing the victims when they were adults.

Read more: Roman Catholic church's paedophile investigator jailed for possessing thousands of child porn images

When they arrested Jarvis, he had 4,000 pornographic images, some of boys aged 10-12. I had no idea there was any kind of rating scale for child porn. But there must be… yuck.

But there were 120 at Level Four, which includes scenes of child rape, and 12 at Level Five, which can include scenes of torture and sadism.

He is an idea. Perhaps the Catholic church should outsource child molestation investigations to the proper authorities? This guy did company damage control. He protected no one.